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Many Americans today worry that our social fabric is fraying. Politics probably has as much to do with this as anything. As ideological divisions have grown, trust has decreased. Republicans and Democrats alike have extremely low opinions of their partisan opponents. Donald Trump lowered the bar for crudity among public officials to new depths. But other factors also contribute to a sense that people just don’t treat each other very well. Social media makes it all too easy to be anonymously rude to strangers without cost or consequence. The pandemic left many on edge, worried about being accosted for wearing a mask, or about not wearing one. It can often seem as though we need to re-learn how to get along with each other.
Alexandra Hudson tackles this problem in her recent book The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves. Neither a self-help book nor an etiquette guide, The Soul of Civility is more like a philosophical investigation, for non-philosophers, into the nature and importance of civility. Peppered with examples from history and politics and replete with short citations from thinkers across the ages, the book makes a strong case for civility as an important virtue.
Hudson argues that our present moment is hardly unique in calling for renewed attention to civility. Instead, she suggests, we are simply repeating an experience that recurs over and over again throughout human history. This is because the need for civility is rooted in a fundamental divide within the human soul: the struggle between our social nature, which leads us to love and need others, and our self-love or (in Augustine’s phrase) libido dominandi, the lust for domination, which pits us against other people and tempts us to take advantage of them. “The human condition is a contradiction, capable of greatness and wretchedness,” writes Hudson. “And the central tension in our nature is between our sociability and our self-love.” The need for civility is not a reaction to conditions in early 21st-century America; it is a permanent feature of the human condition.
It is not surprising, therefore, that we find writers and thinkers from all times and places emphasizing the need for civility. Hudson offers examples stretching from Gilgamesh to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Most pages of the book feature offset quotations about civility from a pantheon of figures; opening it at random, I see Jane Austen and Edmund Burke, David Hume and Henry David Thoreau, Homer and Roger Williams. As I read, I was frequently reminded of the appendix in C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, in which he collects examples from various cultural and religious traditions to illustrate the universal moral principles that he calls “the Tao.” Hudson offers us the Tao of civility, as it were.
At the heart of her argument is a distinction between politeness and civility. The former she calls a “technique,” the latter a “disposition.” Politeness is “decorum, mores, and etiquette,” a set of skills for smoothing social interactions, avoiding annoyances, and getting along with others. It can be misused, however, and turned into a tool for getting ahead, one more way to use other people as means for our own benefit. Indeed, Hudson says it was her discovery of this fact, while working in politics in DC—where someone could be polite to you one day and stab you in the back the next—that provided the initial impetus to ponder the questions of this book. Civility, by contrast, requires a “general regard for our fellow persons and citizens,” a willingness to recognize their “shared moral status as members of the human community” and as persons “intrinsically valuable and worthy of respect.” If we put it in specifically Christian terms, it involves seeing the imago Dei in each person.
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Hudson argues that one can therefore be polite without displaying true civility, and also that civility can push one beyond the bounds of mere politeness. In the latter case, she is thinking especially of injustices calling for civil disobedience. Here it seems to me that she is only half-right. One can indeed be polite without being civil—but not, I think, civil without being polite. (Her own examples strike me as outspoken, forthright, even hard-nosed, but not impolite.) Where politeness is abandoned, we may be disobedient, but we will not be civilly disobedient. Better, perhaps, simply to concede that in some circumstances civility (though not the kind of respect owed to all persons) may just be out of reach. I am reminded of John Locke’s Second Treatise, where he responds to a critic named Barclay. Barclay had objected to Locke’s defense of a right to revolution, insisting that subjects resisting their lords must do so with appropriate reverence. To which Locke sarcastically replied, “He that can reconcile blows and reverence, may, for aught I know, desire for his pains, a civil, respectful cudgeling where-ever he can meet with it.”
Hudson devotes multiple chapters in the book’s central and longest section to various political aspects of civility, and appropriately so, given the word’s etymological link to the Latin words for citizen, citizenship, and civic. She usefully reminds us that today is not the first time American politics has been deeply polarized. As a response to such polarization, she recommends that we learn to “unbundle” people—to see them as human beings, “in their fullness and complexity,” and to look “beyond their political beliefs, their party, or their voting record.” If we can “reclaim a full, nuanced, and rich view of the human person,” we can recognize the fundamental human dignity of our fellow citizens instead of reducing them to a set of opinions. An indispensable tool for doing this is actually spending time with other people, getting to know them as parents, or parishioners, or hobbyists, or sports fans… or, we might add, citizens.
All good advice, though not, perhaps, terribly original. And indeed The Soul of Civility is not a very original book. I would describe it as wise, but not profound, if that makes sense. It is full of timeless truths and practical wisdom; I found little to disagree with in its discussions. But it is not full of new ideas.
Which is fine, of course, since most of the good ideas have already been had, by various people, numerous times over. If you are looking for a provocative, innovative analysis of civility, one that breaks new ground, this is not the book for you. On the other hand, if you want to be reminded of important truths that you really already know—probably your own parents taught them to you long ago—but that it can be easy to forget in our current environment, then you might enjoy Alexandra Hudson’s refresher course.
And it does seem that we could stand to benefit from a few additional reminders these days!
Thanks for reading. See you next week for another installment From My Bookshelf.