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Transcending Tragedy: The Idea of Civility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Glenn Tinder
Glenn Tinder*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Boston
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Abstract

This article belongs in the area of what Karl Jaspers calls “existential elucidation.” It is concerned less with political ideals than with the relationship of the person to those ideals and to the realities that often contradict them.

During recent centuries political activity has been increasingly governed by the confidence that history is under human control. The tragedies and disappointments of the twentieth century, however, cast serious doubt on this confidence. Thus it is incumbent on us to reconsider man's whole stance in relation to history. The core of the article is the definition of an alternative stance, which I call “civility.”

The clue to civility was provided by Plato when he suggested, in The Republic, that although the ideal city probably could not be realized in history, its form might be reproduced here and there in the souls of individuals. In pursuance of this clue, civility is defined, on the one hand, as partial detachment from action, and from the ideological preoccupations frequently accompanying action, and, on the other hand, as concentration on governance of the self. Although such governance entails historical independence, it does not set one apart from others; on the contrary, its fundamental principle is openess to the totality of the human.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 547 - 560
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1974

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References

1 While the idea of civility does not fall within the usual boundaries of the philosophy of history, it is closely related to that subject; most philosophers of history deal, at least implicitly, with the issue of man's participation in history. The literature in this area of course is vast. As examples of the kind of works that I have found useful in developing the concept of civility I might cite Bultmann, Rudolf, The Presence of Eternity: History and Eschatology (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957)Google Scholar, and Jaspers, Karl, The Origin and Goal of History, trans. Bullock, Michael (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953)Google Scholar.

2 Several twentieth century thinkers have developed able critiques of modern man's self-confident activism. Examples are Niebuhr, Reinhold, especially in The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952)Google Scholar; Popper, Karl, in The Poverty of Historicism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957)Google Scholar, as well as in The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1945), 2 vols.Google Scholar; and Ellul, Jacques, in The Political Illusion, trans. Kellen, Konrad (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967)Google Scholar, and Autopsy of Revolution, trans. Wolf, Patricia (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971)Google Scholar. Such writers have contributed much to developing the grounds of the idea of civility; but none of them have gone far toward developing the concepts of personal autonomy and universal communality which, as I shall try to show in the following discussion, are essential elements in civility.

3 The most powerful commentary on the dilemma in which man is placed by his unquenchable will to community and the insuperable limits on his powers of action is to be found, perhaps, in the novels of Dostoevsky. It is often assumed that while Dostoevsky was profound in his psychology he was mad in his politics; supposedly he was a nationalistic and theocratic reactionary. This assessment is quite unbalanced, however. As is shown in his major political testament, “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor,” the key to his political thought is the idea of freedom; and while he did not develop a positive concept of civility, he was an exceedingly powerful critic of incivility.

4 Jaspers has devoted considerable attention to something he calls “historicity.” See his Philosophy, trans. Ashton, E. B. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), II, 104–129 Google Scholar. Jaspers uses the term very broadly, so that it usually seems to denote man's embeddedness not merely in historical events, properly speaking, but in any particular and unrepeatable set of circumstances.

5 For an intelligent expression of this view see Laing, R. D., The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1965)Google Scholar.

6 See Hegel, G. W. F., The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. Baillie, J. B., second edition (New York: Macmillan, 1931), pp. 228–240 Google Scholar.

7 The main philosophical roots of the idea of civility, as I understand it, are to be found in the writings of certain philosophers who have maintained the ontological primacy of persons. In my own case Nicolas Berdyaev and Karl Jaspers have proved particularly illuminating. I would direct the reader's attention especially to Berdyaev's, Slavery and Freedom, trans, by French, R. M. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944)Google Scholar, and to Jaspers's, Philosophy, 3 volsGoogle Scholar. It is to be noted, however, that neither writer applied his “personalism,” as it might be called, very clearly in the realm of politics. A writer such as Jean-Paul Sartre also, of course, is a “personalist,” and in addition is far more politically conscious than were either Berdyaev or Jaspers. But I am doubtful—and here we touch on an issue too large to be explored in this paper—that Sartre's atheism provides grounds for the personal autonomy on which civility depends; in other words, I suspect that there are metaphysical grounds for the fierce, lifelong activism that has made Sartre politically fascinating but often not very civil.

8 I Corinthians 7:29–31.

9 See Locke, John, A Letter Concerning Toleration, in John Locke on Education and Politics, ed. Penniman, Howard R. (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1947), pp. 17–68 Google Scholar. The idea that one should simultaneously believe and doubt is implicit in Locke's injunction to realize that you may be wrong.

10 Of course, the pre-eminent philosopher of autonomy is Kant. Kant's whole dualistic outlook, structured by the dichotomy between nature and freedom, is perhaps the firmest philosophical ground for the idea of civility. It is noteworthy that both Berdyaev and Jaspers were self-professed Kantians.

11 Some of the best discussions of communality in recent literature, or indeed, so far as I am aware, in the literature of all times, are found in the works of Gabriel Marcel and Martin Buber. Neither writer, however, formulated the concept of civility—Marcel lacking sufficient political concern, and Buber being too optimistic to envision the necessity of so alienated a form of political responsibility.

12 The observant and explanatory relationship that Marxism encourages, of course, is closely connected with the Marxist emphasis on historical action. The point is not to interpret the world, as Marx observed in the “Theses on Feuerbach,” but to change it. Since it was Lenin who brought out the activist component in Marxism, it may be said that Marxism-Leninism constitutes a model of a kind of thought opposed to civility. There are very different kinds of thought, however, that also are opposed to civility. An outstanding example from our own day, the product of a thinker and writer of great power, is the work of Karl Barth, especially the multi-volume Church Dogmatics. It is not religious faith as such that determines Barth's opposition to civility but rather his conviction that the truth can be embodied in a dogma that is absolutely authoritative and beyond discussion and that a Christian's sphere of life is the Church, not human society as a whole.

13 See my comments on Barth in the preceding footnote. It is to be noted that Berdyaev, Jaspers, Marcel, and Buber all, in different ways, were religious. The core of Dostoevsky's political outlook was not theocracy but—a very different matter—the notion that atheism undermines respect for freedom, and thus civility. That idea deserves serious consideration—something it has not as yet received, owing perhaps to its being confused with the Concept of theocracy.

14 Such views are expressed in Hegel's Philosophy of Right and in Sartre's play No Exit.

15 See, for example, Arendt, Hannah, On Revolution (New York: The Viking Press, 1963)Google Scholar, where the concept of “public happiness” is discussed.

16 Quoted by Lewis, Anthony, The New York Times, 01 6, 1973 Google Scholar.

17 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Notebooks for The Idiot, ed. Wasiolek, Edward, trans. Strelsky, Katharine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 172 Google Scholar.

18 For evidence of this see Halberstam, David, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972)Google Scholar.

19 Halberstam, p. 44.

20 Ibid., p. 123.

21 There are of course many intellectuals who have achieved this balance. The tradition of what might be called “inconclusive rationality” goes back to Socrates. Perhaps its greatest representative in our time is Jaspers. Marcel exemplifies the same tradition by presenting in his written works not a finished philosophy but a process of philosophical reflection; he explicitly designated his thought as “neo-Socratic.” Karl Popper expresses an inconclusive rationality that is set on different philosophical foundations, as does Max Weber, at least in his theory of value. Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia is in large part expressive of such a viewpoint, but it can be argued that it all is cast overboard when he develops his concept of the sociology of knowledge.

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