Righteous Incivility Revisited

Confucians are almost totally silent about what, if anything, might justify incivility and rudeness. This chapter revisits the issue of righteous incivility, incivility motivated by moral concerns, and considers Confucian resources for addressing when, whether, and how civility norms can be broken. It emphasizes the role of good situational judgment in matters of dissent and advocates for a broader understanding of civility’s possibilities. Civility, as the Confucians practiced it, can be fierce and imaginatively used in dissent. The chapter also considers what a psychology of disagreement rooted in a commitment to civility would look like, articulating an alternative picture to our more commonplace descriptions of righteous incivility.

Temptations to Bad Manners

This chapter examines why ordinary forms of social rudeness can be appealing. Having ordinary good manners largely consists in developing good habits rather than deciding in individual cases to be polite. This chapter considers why we are resistant to developing such habits. It considers common and historical complaints against good manners, most especially the criticism that manners involve fakery and the sense that manners are dreary and joyless. These complaints represent useful forms of skepticism but can also, the chapter argues, seed self-deception. For we are far more likely to find joyful honesty in our own bad manners than in the bad manners of others. So too, the world of honesty and fun we associate with slack in manners is not the world we are likely to get. Instead, bad manners will fall hardest on those with the least.

Introduction

This chapter provides a basic orientation to the book as a whole. It canvasses contemporary distinctions drawn between the concepts of “civility,” manners,” and “etiquette.” It provides a brief account of how these concepts came to be treated as distinct and introduces readers to the Confucian concept of li, a term that encompasses all of these concepts at once. The chapter argues that efforts to be more polite need to take account of all the behavioral work we describe when we invoke “civility,” “manners,” and “etiquette.”

Disappointments and Consolation

This chapter considers what we might expect if we live more politely. It is natural to wish that life will just be better for the polite person—that she will find her relationships thriving, her society better, her life more enjoyable and intrinsically rewarding. But this chapter argues that we should not expect radical change. Rather, a key element in living politely is learning to withstand disappointment well. One needs, in other words, to learn how to maintain motivation to remain civil even when the results are not as one would wish. The chapter offers a discussion of how such motivation can be framed and preserved.

Managing the Face

This chapter considers the ways that the style of an action can matter to its meaning. In performing civil gestures and speech, matters such as tone of voice, facial expression, and demeanor influence what we communicate to others. Performing a “polite” action with the wrong bodily expression or tone can undercut or even wholly cancel its politeness. This chapter examines the many ways the style of an action can work on our understanding of the action, suggesting that being civil requires a bodily management we often overlook. The chapter also considers how emphasizing the body’s role in communication can invoke historically problematic associations with disgust and with class- and status-bound assumptions about what causes disgust. The chapter seeks to articulate a way of considering bodily management that evades falling prey to reasoning that encourages pernicious forms of disgust.

The Big Values

This chapter offers two complementary approaches to Confucian accounts of manners. It contrasts Confucian views with those more commonplace in contemporary and historical Western sources. It outlines the approach to human dependency embedded in Confucian sources, emphasizing the material, social, and emotional needs we have of others. A first account of Confucian manners rests on these supporting dependencies as a source of well-being, using both childhood and the film Cast Away as illustration. A second Confucian account is rooted in the ills of dependencies that chafe and the risks of misanthropy, and uses care of corpses as an analogy. In this more pessimistic account, manners work against impulses to find humanity repellent and dependencies burdensome.

Rules, Rules, Rules

Effective practice of civility and good manners requires that we follow socially shared conventional rules for conduct—etiquette. This chapter undertakes to show just why “big” values such as respect and consideration need “small” rules for their expression. The chapter considers the necessary role played by rules in both habit formation and situational judgment. It addresses the social dynamics that make rules meaningful, discussing how rules enable effective communication of intentions and dispositions. It likewise examines how rules can operate to generate a morally useful uniformity in behavior, guarding us against the expression of pernicious biases and inequities in our treatment of others.

Living the Big Values

This chapter addresses the processes at work in Confucian cultivation of manners, especially as this bears on our willingness to be polite to some people while reluctant to be polite to others. It focuses on Confucian attention to external behavior as a resource for shaping internal dispositions and attitudes. It likewise attends to the social dynamics of practicing manners, the ways in which civil behaviors can encourage answering like behaviors from others, steering social environments toward greater sociality. The chapter additionally addresses how stereotyping judgments of others can depress efforts to be civil and considers manners as a resource for inculcating greater humility in our evaluations of others and as a behavioral standard that can reduce the effects of stereotyping judgments on others. The Confucian account is coupled throughout with material drawn from contemporary social psychological studies.

Temptations to Incivility

This chapter considers why incivility can be very appealing and seeks to reduce its appeal. It discusses the more raw pleasures of incivility, such as our enjoyment at disrespecting opponents, but focuses most on those incivilities we want to count as righteous or morally important. Incivility can seem most tempting precisely when we believe it to serve higher moral purposes—summoning attention to social ills or manifesting important moral views in our conduct. Despite this, the chapter argues, we have strong reasons for self-distrust when we want to be righteously uncivil, for our motivations will rarely be merely righteous. Tribalism, lack of humility, and popular rhetoric that encourages us to see incivility as heroic can encourage self-deception about the righteousness of our motivations.