In Good Company What Do We Mean By Civility?

Feb 2, 2010

Everyone’s talking about civility these days, but like the weather, no one does anything about it.

I suspect we’ve lost the meaning of the word, which comes from the same root as “civics.” To behave civilly is to behave in ways that build up community, as a citizen does.

Politicians having difficulty achieving their policy goals suddenly discover the value of “bi-partisanship”  and tend to view their political opponents as “obstructionist.”  

The reaction is understandable. However, it isn’t a civil reflection, because it assumes bad faith on the part of people who honestly disagree. When pro-life politicians in Congress “obstruct” any effort to expand the abortion license, they are acting on both reason and conscience, not being ornery.

If I think someone’s heading over a cliff, it’s an act of charity to get in the way!

The President will have to pardon me, therefore, for thinking his lecture on civility to Congress during his State of the Union address last week was not a model of the virtue he was calling for, because he denounced his opponents for being obstructionists at the very moment he was asking for good will!

Much better was the tone he struck when visiting the Republican party “retreat” the following day. Did you watch it on the internet?

It was uplifting and heartening because both he and the Republican Congressmen in his audience were relaxed, respectful, and clearly enjoying the discussion and each other. No meeting of the minds was reached; they have substantive disagreements.  But together they modeled the sort of exchange which we might properly call “civil,” and which provides the basis for discovering genuine common ground.

I couldn’t help but think of Pope Benedict as I reflected on this word, “civility.”

When his "Jesus of Nazareth" was released, the secular media were impressed by the line in his introduction which explained that the book is a private meditation and not to be considered magisterial. The Pope famously declared: “Everyone is free, then, to contradict me.”

Hardly anyone seemed to notice the line which immediately followed however. “I would only ask my readers for that initial goodwill without which there can be no understanding.”

Here the Pope hits on why civility is essential to the common good.

It isn’t simply that life is more pleasant when we are not all angry and denouncing each other as idiots and fascists. It is that when we are quick to take offense or pounce on minutiae, we are liable to miss the point, and then the ability to think and reason is lost.

Coincidentally, I recently ran across Cardinal Newman’s description of a gentleman from "The Idea of A University," which reads in part:

 “He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out.”

The more we are convinced of the truth of what we believe, the calmer we ought to be. Newman continues, “We should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend.”

There's a lot more. What interests me is that the gentleman doesn’t have these qualities simply because they're beautiful. They are essential to the pursuit of truth:

“…his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds; who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their time on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it.”

As the pope indicates in that one introductory line, it is not possible to arrive at truth without thinking well of my opponent. My first intellectual effort must be to understand him as he understands himself: his aims, his premises, what is important to him. Only then can I either see the validity of his argument or begin to persuade him of my point.

Civility, then, is not merely courtesy, a spoonful of sugar to make hard medicine go down. It is an essential element of reason. You can’t be wise without it.