An Aristotelian Philosophy of Civility

This book explores the concept of civility in the context of culture and politics. The book’s primary assumption is that politics depends on, and is made possible by culture: that the realm of possibilities in politics is defined by the realm of what already exists in a particular culture. It is argued that whilst it is certainly possible to innovate in politics, all such innovation has a cultural background: it is impossible to imagine anything politically which is not already apparent culturally as a political potential.

With this conceptual relationship in mind, civility is here presented as a set of crucial, explicit or implicit social norms. These norms provide a threshold for what is acceptable in interpersonal relationships and what is imaginable in the public domain. They have relevance because all public acts and words are expected to meet certain cultural, internalized standards of acceptance: those which define decent, socially acceptable behaviour and communication. Civility is the form of socially acceptable behaviour, consisting in essence of a set of constraints slowly developed by social cohabitation. These norms of civility, or practical virtue are valid for all interpersonal communications and so also encompass exchanges with external communities. Moreover, it is valid not only in times of peace and prosperity, but also defines what agents can do in conflicts, even brutal conflicts like war or civil war, as well as in times of hardship such as economic or financial crises. In this sense, to confront the major building blocks of the standards of civility, or what citizenship requires in politics and civil society in Western parliamentary democracies is a major precondition for making sense of contemporary politics. In this sense, this book claims, the Aristotelian tradition of politics still holds.

An Aristotelian Philosophy of Civility is essential reading for all scholars and researchers of culture, society and politics as well as for all advanced students of social and political philosophy.