Why Be Civil?
The Ethics and Moral Obligations of Civility
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Civility, defined most simply, is the deliberate practice of courteous and polite behavior in our relations with other people. There are obvious values in such courtesy because politeness functions as type of lubricant in the social gears: no human group could long endure if no one bothered with even a minimum of civil behavior. But does that mean that civility is simply a facade to keep people from strangling one another, or are there more substantive ethical issues at stake as well?
Obviously civility can be a facade, but the fact that some form of behavior is open to abuse does not therefore invalidate it or mean that we can dispense with it entirely. That civility may be more closely connected to ethics is suggested when we remember that morality exists for the purpose of regulating social behavior just as civility does. Neither makes any sense in a "society" of a single individual, but no society would be able to function if either disappeared.
But that is merely a suggestion of a relationship, not an actual relationship itself. For this, we need to move beyond the general observation about the purpose of civility in social affairs and ask what civility actually means when it comes to how we treat one another. First, there is the relatively obvious fact that when we we fail to display basic civility, we are failing to display basic tolerance and respect for someone.
Now, it may very well be that this person doesn't deserve our tolerance and respect. There are any number of people who act in a way that seems designed to deliberately put others off, make them angry, and give them reasons to show disrespect. They are, in other words, showing gross incivility to you and others. The existence of such people does not, however, justify withholding civility on a large scale from entire groups.
Moreover, there is an important sense in which it is insufficient to base out behavior solely on the way in which others "deserve" to have us treat them. Granted, that must play a role, and it is true that how we treat a person is a reflection of how they themselves act; however, how we treat a person is also a reflection of our own character and personality. When we are uncivil, we are saying something about ourselves as well as others. When we are civil towards a person who obviously doesn't deserve it, we are also saying something about ourselves - and perhaps something better and more important than when we are uncivil.
We must also be careful that we don't set our standards for basic tolerance and respect too high. There are differing degrees of tolerance and respect, of course, and there are many people who cannot be accorded active tolerance or respect, but who deserve such things in at least a passive form. Passively, tolerance and respect simply mean accepting that a person with different beliefs and perspectives has a right to exist and doesn't deserve to be attacked merely because of those differences - no matter how great they are.
The immorality of incivility goes deeper than that, however. When we withhold tolerance and respect from a person, we stop treating them as a fellow human being. As A. C. Grayling wrote in Meditations for the Humanist:
There begins impertinence: make a person a label, or a sum of money, and he becomes not an end in himself, but an instrument; and to treat anyone as such is, as Kant argued, not just the supreme discourtesy but the supreme wrong.
One further point, also noted by Grayling, bears mentioning: although not immediately and intuitively obvious, it seems fair to argue that gross incivility is very often a consequence of a moralizing attitude and personality. Graying describes the moralizing person as one who wants others to conform to their views, is intolerant of differing views, and is willing to use coercion to bring about their goals.
Incivility might be counted as a form of such moralizing because it is indicative of a great intolerance of difference and does seek to coerce through bullying, personal attacks, and the generation of social disapproval and/or psychological pressure. Those who are deliberately and extensively discourteous may not be the typical sort of priggish moralist we commonly think of, but perhaps they do constitute their own unpleasant subspecies in the menagerie of human society.
Why be civil? That's very much like asking "Why be moral?" If you have to ask because you genuinely don't understand what the point is, then it is unlikely that any logical explanation will help you. If you can't figure out on your own why you should treat others with basic respect and dignity, then no one else will be able to do it for you.
If the question arises, however, as part of a general inquiry into the nature of human relations, then the answer seems to be this: we are civil because we are moral and we are moral because, quite simply, we are human (which is also the reason why we are uncivil and immoral, paradoxically enough).
Humans are social animals that live in social environments which require basic systems of morality and civility to survive. Sometimes the general standards of morality and civility draw lines at inappropriate places, and sometimes we are justified in violating those standards when the situation calls for it. We are not, however, justified in abandoning standards entirely.
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