Meliorating Virtues
Civility
Keep disagreement answerable without making it contemptuous.
In this imagined scene, two neighbors disagree about the shared noticeboard. One keeps the disputed card on the table and pulls up a seat for the dissenter; the discussion stays about the proposal.
Understanding Civility
Civility is a disposition to treat people as participants entitled to basic respect in shared discussion and public life, including during disagreement. It keeps reasons, claims and conduct available for criticism without reducing a person to contempt. Pulling up a stool makes the dissenter a participant rather than an inconvenience to remove.
Read this collection’s historical contextCivility: finding the balance
Neighbors disagree about a shared notice.
Too little of the fitting response
Contempt replaces an answer
One mocks the dissenter instead of considering the objection.
A fitting response
Standing preserved
A stool and a hearing keep the disagreement about the notice.
A distortion of the purpose
Manners silence substance
The host forbids any strong objection because disagreement spoils the atmosphere.
Civility earns its name when respect makes criticism possible rather than decorative.
Civility gives…
Shared matters can receive criticism before a quiet exclusion hardens around them. Participants can hear a reasoned refusal and know where the disagreement lies. Civility can support accountability because it allows objections to be stated plainly without making insult the main event.
What Civility makes possible
Civil discussion gives an objection somewhere to go. The neighbors can examine the proposed notice, ask who it affects and decide what to change. The disagreement may remain sharp. What matters is that participation and an answer do not depend on pleasing the person who already has the room.
Civility in ordinary life
- Criticize a public proposal by naming its effect and the change you seek.
- Let someone finish a relevant objection before answering it.
- Make a disagreement accessible to a new participant rather than relying on an inner circle’s contempt.
Nearby virtues, different work
Politeness concerns familiar considerate forms; Civility protects basic standing in disagreement. Tolerance allows legitimate difference. Reasonableness weighs arguments. A polished greeting can be polite while a meeting still excludes every unwelcome view.
Civility and its counterfeits
Tone policing is a counterfeit of Civility: someone refuses to hear a substantive complaint because its speaker sounds upset. Genuine civility addresses the claim while maintaining a workable manner. Pleasantly excluding a dissenter is another counterfeit; smoothness cannot replace participation.
How to cultivate Civility
State the issue before describing the person. Give a relevant objection an answer, even when you reject it. Arrange turns and access so criticism can reach the discussion. When words become contemptuous, return to the claim or pause the exchange rather than requiring submission.
Try it today
In one low-stakes disagreement, summarize the other person’s actual claim and state your objection to it without a personal insult. A written private rehearsal is enough.
Keep the practice proportionate
You need not enter hostile discussions or remain in threatening ones. Civil objection can be firm; nobody must sound serene to have a legitimate complaint.
A question worth returning to
Whose participation does our comfortable manner still leave out?
Quotations and further reading
These historical passages offer different philosophical and literary perspectives. Each note identifies its setting, point of comparison and relevant limits; none supplies an official definition of this virtue.
There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted.
CHAPTER II. OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. · Walter Scott Publishing edition with W. L. Courtney introduction dated 1901; selected passages from Mill’s main text, first published 1859.
Mill gives discussion a role in interpreting experience. A civil hearing lets participants test what an observation means rather than silencing the person who brings it.
We must also take the greatest care to show courtesy and consideration toward those with whom we converse.
Marcus Tullius Cicero · On Duties
BOOK I MORAL GOODNESS · Walter Miller, 1913
Cicero asks for courtesy and consideration toward interlocutors. Respect belongs within the conversation rather than being reserved for those who agree.
Now reason demands that nothing be done with unfairness, with false pretence, or with misrepresentation.
Marcus Tullius Cicero · On Duties
BOOK III THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE RIGHT AND THE EXPEDIENT · Walter Miller, 1913
Cicero connects reason with refusing unfairness and false representation. A civil manner has substance when an objection is represented honestly.
We are to pass by these common rules of civility, in favour of truth and liberty.
CHAPTER VIII——OF THE ART OF CONFERENCE · Charles Cotton translation, William Carew Hazlitt edition, 1877
Montaigne defends frank self-examination in writing against common rules of civility. His particular argument shows that a courteous convention can yield to truth; it is not a license for contempt toward another person.
Who wishes to resist the eminent and polite, in behalf of the poor, and low, and impolite? and who that dares do it, can keep his temper sweet, his frolic spirits?
Ralph Waldo Emerson · The Conduct of Life
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Conduct of Life · , exact-print and territory review held.
Emerson asks who will challenge the eminent and polite on behalf of people with less standing. The question exposes the cost of criticism and the danger of equating polished manner with rightful claims.
If a single person presume to offer his opinion in their presence, though upon the most indifferent subject, he is immediately silenced as an incompetent person.
Charles Lamb · Essays of Elia and Last Essays of Elia
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE · Elia (1823) / Last Essays of Elia (1833) in E. V. Lucas’s edited Works, volume II; editorial notes excluded, exact edition/contributor rights held.
Speaker: Elia, Charles Lamb’s essay persona
Lamb satirizes married people who treat a bachelor’s opinion as incompetent even beyond the subject of marriage. The scene challenges a company that mistakes its shared status for a right to exclude ordinary participation.
I know that a kind of fashion now prevails of respecting prejudices; and when any one dares to face them, though actuated by humanity and armed by reason, he is superciliously asked, whether his ancestors were fools.
Mary Wollstonecraft · A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
CHAPTER 5. · , exact-print and territory review held.
Wollstonecraft describes opposition to a reasoned challenge to prejudice. Familiarity and ancestral authority do not remove a claim’s need to answer criticism.
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