The Need for Civility

R. J. Snell, philosophy professor at Eastern University, posted an interesting essay today on The Public Discourse: “ Universities and the Graciousness of Being .”

In the main, Snell wants to draw attention to the important role that good manners play in social life. At a minimum, like the fig leaves sewn together by Adam and Eve, a degree of decorum covers over the raw edges of our personalities. Nobody has perfect control of his feelings of anger, disgust, or boredom. Good manner help us draw a screen over the more distasteful aspects of our always imperfectly disciplined lives.

Yes, there is more to good manners than what Burke called the “decent drapery” of life. “Civility,” Snell continues, also “means due respect—piety, even—toward citizens of the cosmos, or, as we usually refer to them, persons. Civility is rightly due to persons because they are goods in themselves, and so not merely factual givens but rather more like gifts. To encounter another person is something like receiving a gift, for in such an encounter a good in itself is gratuitously offered for our consideration—the very graciousness of being—and in the face of that gift we owe courtesy and civil society.”

Snell is surely right. “Please” and “thank you”—and all the detailed conventions of courtesy—are ways of honoring others. At the end of his analysis of justice, Jospeh Pieper points out that societies always mete out an imperfect justice. In some way, even if we’re lucky in some aspect of our lives, all of us fail to get what we deserve in some other aspect.

Civility, therefore, serves as a collective compensatory gesture. We have lots of self-serving reasons to give respect to the rich and powerful. But to give up you seat on the bus—it’s a way of diffusing respect throughout society. That’s one reason why, when English language dropped a distinction between the formal and informal second person (“you are” vs. “thou art”), the movement was upward. Everyone was given the respect of a formal address.

OK, but what about the universities? I’m not at all convinced that American higher education is the source of our present incivility, although perhaps our colleges and universities are guilty of a crime of omission, not resisting general trends with enough vigor.

In general, the breakdown of civility stems from the fact that the haute bourgeois in America—what used to be called the WASP establishment—largely lost confidence. Today we identify downward on the social scale as much as possible, swearing like sailors, dressing like drug dealers and prostitutes, and in general pushing our way forward with little regard for others. Many are kind, some are interesting, most are law-abiding, but fewer and fewer of us are gracious—or, to use an almost antedeluvian term, genteel.

There are exceptions. I had a colleague years ago, a young Southerner who taught medieval philosophy. He always wore a tie, and he insisted on calling his student “Mr. So-and-So” and “Miss This-or-That.” It’s not for everyone, perhaps, but the sentiment was surely correct.