On Civility and Its Misunderstanding

Albert B. Fernandez

The Critical Open Mind, October 2022

A decade ago, when discussion of civility was at its height, Hillary Clinton was asked for her opinion on the subject.  She said that “. . . you cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you care about and stand for,” presumably meaning the Republican party.  What Clinton, like many people, did not understand is that being civil is not the same as being nice. It may be true that you cannot be nice to those who want to destroy what you care about, but civility is intended for those very people, for dealing with those who strongly disagree with you, who might be considered your enemies, while continuing to be their fellow citizen.  Another commentator on television decried exhortations to civility—of which this essay would be an example–on the grounds that civility is not enough, remarking that if we were to say about a husband and wife that they are civil with each other, it would be damning them with faint praise.  The point being missed here is that a married couple is one thing, and a community of citizens is quite another.

Civility is what makes a diverse, pluralist society possible. José Ortega y Gasset said, “Civilization is civility.”  Civilization is different from tribe and tribalism, in which civility is not necessary because everyone is of the same ethnicity, politics, and religion, and often related to the other members of the tribe by blood. The word “civility” comes from civiliter, Latin for “as becomes a citizen.” A citizen is one who dwells in a city or civitas. It is in cities that diverse populations first appeared, including, as in classical Athens, different political parties and different schools of philosophy.  All of history could be summed up as movement away from the homogeneous tribal condition and toward civilization.

For a diverse population to endure and grow, the individuals that comprise it must be able to live and work next to each other and to speak with each other, in spite of the tension that difference always entails.  They must be able to deal with competitors and work with political opponents in a framework of laws, ordinances, judges, and forums where shared issues are debated. In Homer’s description, in the Iliad,of the two cities depicted on the shield of Achilles, one of the two is portrayed as riven by quarrelling.  In the other city, disputes are settled by judges who decide on the basis of “the straightest opinion.”  By evoking two cities, only one of which is ruled peacefully, Homer is pointing out that differences can be settled by courts and on the basis of reason.  Civility does not guarantee peace, but in its absence the common means of dealing with difference is verbal or physical combat.

Yielding to “the straightest opinion” is what, several centuries after Homer, Socrates and Plato recommended and exemplified.  In Euthyphro, Socrates says that the argument must be followed wherever it goes as if one were its lover (14c).  In Phaedo, the last dialog of Socrates, which includes the moment when he drinks the hemlock, he tells his disciples:

          . . . don’t hesitate to put forward your own views, and point out

          any way in which you think that my account could be improved.

          (84d, trans. Hugh Tredennick, Collected Dialogues, Princeton, 1961)

And later:

          I am in danger of regarding [the argument] not philosophically,

          but self-assertively (91a, op. cit)

And again:

          If you think that anything I say is true, you must agree with me;

          if not, oppose it with every argument that you have (91c, op. cit)

In contrast to the open and welcoming disposition of Socrates toward truth-seeking contention, techniques for avoidance and concealment of contention have been elaborated throughout the world, as in the courts of Renaissance Europe.  Conflict between proud aristocrats from the diverse corners of a kingdom was smoothed by what was called “politezza” in Italian and the more familiar “politesse” in French. It was a system of micro-laws that minimized interpersonal friction between strangers. What we now think of as civility may include politeness, but the term “civility” is less applicable to courts and parlors where etiquette is paramount than to parliaments and assemblies, as it is primarily concerned, not unlike Socrates, with maintaining diversity of opinion, especially regarding political issues, while preventing its degeneration into quarreling.

When civility is misunderstood as politeness or as abstention from criticism, then, far from helping insure diversity of opinion, it becomes a tool for suppressing dissent and limiting the range of opinion.  The classic example from fiction is the expulsion of Goethe’s young and outspoken Werther from an aristocratic soirée, for the sake of preserving a polite atmosphere. In many a discussion those with minority or solitary opinions are first handicapped and then silenced, in the name of civility understood as niceness or politeness.  They are handicapped, to begin with, by simplistic egalitarianism, which regards it as only fair that a dissenting member of a group should get equal time with everybody else, that is, if there are twenty persons in a discussion and two of them hold a minority opinion, it is supposed to be fair for the latter to get one tenth of the air time. And this in spite of the circumstance that their views, precisely because they are not commonly held, are likely to require more exposition, more effort to persuade, more air time.  Thus, in groups that strive for a pleasant ambiance, dissenters are more likely to feel threatened, to get irritated, to raise their voices, to interrupt.  Then the trap springs:  “Why can’t you be civil like the rest of us?” 

Though some enjoyment may be found in the matching of wits, for most people debate, no matter how civil, is not likely to be as agreeable as agreement. Civility is the ability to sustain a peaceful  conversation notwithstanding the disagreement and its attendant distastefulness, with someone who explicitly or implicitly challenges one’s own thinking and values, without concealing differences, as happens with politeness.

Like politeness, civility has what might be called its etiquette. Among the key components of civility is sticking to issues and avoiding gratuitous personal derogation of those who are disagreeing with you.  Anger, anathema to politeness, can be expressed without breaching civility.  Perhaps the most frequently cited way to keep anger within the pale of civility is to avoid what rhetoricians have called the ad hominem fallacy, which makes those who dissent from you the target of your rhetoric.

In spite of its customary appellation, the ad hominem is not necessarily a fallacy. Whether it is or not depends on whether what is being said about interlocutors or their associates is relevant to the idea under discussion.  If what is being argued, for example, is the effectiveness of a medical treatment, the malpractice history of the doctor who is advocating the treatment, though personally damaging to him, would not be irrelevant.  Broadly, criticism to the effect that the interlocutor is not competent or willing to construct arguments would be relevant to any discussion.  And there are times when the interlocutor or some other person are themselves the issue being discussed.  But even in such cases, when ad hominem arguments are not out of place, they will, excepting cases like that of Socrates, increase the chance of a discussion degenerating into a fight, which can only show who is stronger, not who is right.

Even if the ad hominem is unavoidable, as when the interlocutor or his friends are themselves the issue, one can still remain within the bounds of civility by staying away from insult.  What distinguishes insults from criticisms is that they cannot be argued against.  They are fundamentally anti-dialogal, unabashedly intended to hurt interlocutors personally. A person cannot be a “three-inch toad,” to quote Shakespeare, or a discrete part of the human body, and it would be ridiculous to argue against such insults as if they were genuine claims.  Just imagine a purely logical being, like the android Data in Star Trek, reacting to being insulted: “I do not understand how I could be . . . .”  Insults are targeted expletives and are thereby impossible to refute.

Judicial proceedings, by their very nature, cannot escape the ad hominem, but the courts contain it.  They demand that allegations be supported by rational argument based on fact. Insults are out of order. Even interruptions are monitored by the court, wisely, because excessive interruption, though only passive aggressive compared to insult, is probably the most common way of turning a conversation into a quarrel.  The same outcome can result from being overly intolerant of interruption, which in some situations is allowed by judges (as well as by Robert’s Rules of Order).

Because of the centrality and the value of disagreement for a diverse and free society, it may be that what is most fundamental to civil communication between persons who differ is the disposition to explain the reasons why one takes a certain position, instead of piling up assertions of one’s position.  The attitude implicit in the articulation of reasons to persons who do not agree matters more than tips for friendly discussion. If two or more parties approach the exchange of mutually dissenting opinions with a will toward understanding, including understanding of one’s own misperceptions, incidental insensitivities and minor breaches of the etiquette of debate will not wreck the discussion. I recently heard someone on a tv news video proclaim that he was “one hundred thousand percent sure” of his view in a certain contention that was much debated at the time. Of course such a statement, which provides no reasons for the asserted position, has zero probative value, and serves only to antagonize those who disagree or might disagree. Even persons who are unwilling or unable to construct an argument should be able to simply say why they have come to believe what they believe.   

What motivates all this talk of civility in our time is that a subculture seems to have arisen, or become more visible than hitherto, that is highly vocal about politics but unconcerned with the potential in language for attaining truth and understanding. Worse than assertion without offering reasons is the absence of even the intention to discuss positions and reasons, which creates the kind of society represented by Homer’s first depicted city.  For those in this relatively new or newly visible culture, whose main habitats seem to be social media and street politics, the aim of what they say in a debate is to rattle the opponent.  They do not regard incivility as requiring justification, but rather expect and practice it as the normal manner of political discussion.  Those who encounter this culture for the first time may be shocked by how disagreement with those who comprise it, however restrained and respectful, is immediately met with voluminous abuse.  Touring Facebook and other social media, one comes across  individuals and groups who, far from seeking dialog with those who disagree with them, silo themselves in demonization clubs and waste no time in abusing anyone who ventures into their cave.

A few years ago I stumbled into a Facebook “truther” group whose faith was that the September 11 attacks had been carried out by American agents.   My comment was “Think of all the things that would have to be true in order for that to be true,” to which the first reply was, “So?” An astounding reply, but not an uncivil one.  But the next respondent to my exhortation to think about the implications simply let loose with vitriol, and when I declined to answer in kind and attempted rational persuasion, the response was, “Is that the best you can do?” as if I had not met the expected standard of belligerence.  Although it may be difficult for some or most of us to believe, there are those who  repudiate dialog and quite sincerely regard fighting and personal abuse (“calling out”) as the proper response to intellectual challenge by a person with different politics. For this mentality, an abusive response is not only permissible but morally commendable.

Like civility, self-righteousness is often misunderstood.  If self-righteousness was nothing more than the state of being convinced that one is on the right side, and wanting to emerge from discussion as the one who was right all along, then all but a few saints of humility could be called self-righteous. What does justify the accusation of self-righteousness is not believing that one’s cause is the right one, but rather refusing to put it to the test of discussion.  J. M. Coetzee, reviewing Norman Mailer’s fictional portrayal of Adolf Hitler, remarks that the real Hitler never experienced being in a classroom where debate is common practice and where claims and accusations are expected to be backed up with evidence. But today you don’t need to bring in Hitler to exemplify self-righteousness as the refusal of discussion.

A modern source of theoretical support for self-righteousness comes from the doctrine that opponents cannot and should not be reasoned with, because they will never give up power unless forced. This doctrine is already implicit in Marx’s The German Ideology and has been repeated by revolutionaries throughout the twentieth century. It is invoked to justify the persecution of people who actually have no significant power to give up but whose beliefs are outside the pale.  Doctrines affirming the futility of reasoning lead to the practice of responding to arguments with insults, which is the identifying gesture of fascism.—lower case, left or right. Fascism is a name that can be given—in lower case–to a long series of political and cultural movements, some of which can be placed on the left and others on the right, that have reacted against the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason and tolerance, with its parliaments and assemblies and committees of correspondence, by countering them with “direct action” and contempt for discussion.

We are accustomed to thinking of political conflict as something that arises between parties or political groups—Democrat vs. Republican, Right vs. Left—because they have conflicting values and conflicting opinions on the issues. And no doubt there are cases in which such conflicts are intense and even irresoluble.  But perhaps the time has come to recognize that what accounts for the majority of intractable conflicts is that one or more of the parties involved are not willing to participate in civil discussion. The real political division is the one that separates those who want to talk in good faith from those who do not. 

(c) Albert B. Fernandez