An integral aspect of democratic practice highlighted during elections is the exchange of views or arguments soliciting the voters’ support. A few years ago, the political philosophers Aiken and Talisse bemoaned the growing dangers of pitched verbal hostilities and proposed that disagreeing civilly, even with your sworn enemies, is a crucial part of democracy.
“We all agree that civility in political argument is an increasingly scarce good. Yet it’s not clear precisely what civility is. On some accounts, civility is equivalent to conflict aversion; one is civil insofar as one is conciliatory and irenic in dealing with one’s political opponents. Civility in this sense seeks to deal with disagreement by disposing of it. Civility of this kind is little more than a call for compromise at the expense of one’s own commitments. Hence, this kind of civility might be inconsistent with actually believing anything. To be sure, compromise among clashing viewpoints is frequently a fitting avenue to pursue once an argument has reached an impasse. But when taken as a fundamental virtue of argument itself, compromise is vicious.
Another prevalent account of civility is focused on the tone one takes in arguing with one’s opponents. The thought is that when arguing, one must avoid overly hostile or antagonistic language. On this view, a paradigmatic case of incivility is name-calling and other forms of expression overtly aimed at belittling or insulting one’s opponents. Now, there is no doubt that maintaining a civil tone when arguing is generally good policy. But a civil tone is not always required, and there are occasions where aggressive language is called for. Argument is a form of confrontation, one with words instead of weapons, and any norm that prevents argument from displaying the critical edges of disagreements undercuts what inspires the argument to begin with. Furthermore, it is possible to fail at proper argumentation and yet maintain a calm and respectful tone of voice. In fact, under certain circumstances, one patronises one’s interlocutor precisely by sustaining one’s composure.
Argumentation is the process of articulating our reasons for holding our beliefs. The point of articulating our reasons is to put them on display so that they may be examined and evaluated. When we argue specifically in response to disagreement, we supply our reasons for the purpose of demonstrating to our interlocutor their strength and the comparative weakness of the reasons that support opposing views. Argumentation hence has within it the idea that one should believe only what the strongest available reasons support. This means that arguers are committed to the possibility of finding that their reasons are weaker than they had initially thought or that their opponent’s case is, in fact, stronger than expected, and when one’s reasons come up short, one may have to revise one’s belief. Unless conducted against the background commitment to the possibility of revising one’s views, argumentation is pointless.
We now are able to identify civility in arguments with tendencies that enable the exchange of reasons among disputants. Chief among these concerns is the need for those who disagree to actually engage with each other’s reasons. This requires arguers to earnestly attempt to correctly understand and accurately represent each other’s views. For similar reasons, arguers must also give a proper hearing to their opponents’ reasons, especially when the opponent is responding to criticism. In addition, when making the case for their own view, arguers must seek to present reasons that their opponents could at least in principle see the relevance of. It is uncivil to speak over one’s opponent or engage in behaviour designed to signal overtly that you are no longer listening.
Thus, we see that civility in argument is not a matter of being nice, calm, or even polite. It instead has to do with being a sincere arguer. Civility is consistent with sharp tones, raised voices, and other forms of adversariality that would in other contexts be inappropriate. But our model of civility also holds that name-calling, impoliteness, and hostility are to be avoided when they would obstruct or undermine properly run argument.”
