Tag: Cheshire Calhoun

In 2013, philosopher Christopher F. Zurn explored the question of how seriously we should take civility in politics. Zurn was writing three years before Trump’s election, with a different set of uncivil behaviors in mind. In 2009, a member of Congress had shouted “you lie” at President Obama during a speech. Even more dramatically, in 2011, U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot, not long after her name had appeared on a “target list” of politicians, with their districts marked by crosshairs. Drawing on the work of Cheshire Calhoun, a philosopher who has analyzed civility in the personal sphere, Zurn writes that civility is always tied to social convention—rules that are based in a particular time and place—but following those rules conveys “the equal respect owed universally to all persons as moral agents.” Another view on civility comes from John Rawls, who argued that—given the variety of moral doctrines we bring to politics—civil political discourse means grounding our political arguments in the areas where our beliefs overlap. Otherwise, Zurn writes, our arguments can only be convincing to people who share our particular religious or philosophical background. Others suggest that arguments about civility are a distraction from the real political issues. If politics is essentially a battleground for armies with opposing, non-negotiable fundamental principles, those calling for civility are either asking for “a mild consensus and a bland unanimity” or cynically using the idea of civil discourse as a bludgeon against their opponents. In some cases, according to Zurn, social pressure to behave civilly in politics may stifle dissent or “be strategically deployed to distract from deep racial injustice of chattel slavery or racial segregation.” Want more stories like this one? In the 1980s, rhetoric of “civilized discussion” helped exclude conversations about sexual orientation and the rights of LGBTQ people from the political stage.