Is civility a sham?
1,751,124 views |
Teresa Bejan |
TED Salon: Brightline Initiative
• October 2018
What exactly is civility, and what does it require? In a talk packed with historical insights, political theorist Teresa Bejan explains how civility has been used as both the foundation of tolerant societies and as a way for political partisans to silence and dismiss opposing views. Bejan suggests that we should instead try for "mere civility": the virtue of being able to disagree fundamentally with others without destroying the possibility of a common life tomorrow. (This talk contains mature language.)
What exactly is civility, and what does it require? In a talk packed with historical insights, political theorist Teresa Bejan explains how civility has been used as both the foundation of tolerant societies and as a way for political partisans to silence and dismiss opposing views. Bejan suggests that we should instead try for "mere civility": the virtue of being able to disagree fundamentally with others without destroying the possibility of a common life tomorrow. (This talk contains mature language.)
This talk was presented at a TED Salon event given in partnership with Brightline Initiative. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.
Read more about TED Salons.About the speaker
Teresa Bejan writes about political theory, bringing historical perspectives to bear on contemporary questions.
Roger Williams | 1643 | Book
The first work of its kind in English, Roger Williams's handbook of Narragansett language is a conversation manual, travel narrative, ethnography and collection of moralizing poetry by turns. Before he was exiled by Massachusetts Bay and founded the tolerant colony of Rhode Island as a haven for religious dissenters, Williams learned about the challenges of toleration and "un-murderous" coexistence first-hand among the local American tribes. His discovery that there was more civility among the Native Americans than the "unchristian Christians" of New England inspired his theory of "mere" civility as the bond of tolerant societies divided by fundamental disagreement.
Teresa M. Bejan | Harvard, 2017 | Book
Today, politicians warn that we face a crisis of civility. But is civility really a virtue, or is it a covert demand for conformity that silences dissent? This book sheds light on our predicament by examining early modern fears about wars of words as an obstacle to religious toleration. From early modern hate speech laws to fights about the "offensiveness" of atheistical speech, Bejan shows that, when it comes to crises of civility, there is truly nothing new under the sun. Against efforts to silence or exclude the "uncivil" from public life, she defends the theory of mere civility put forward by Roger Williams, the 17th-century founder of Rhode Island, as a promising path forward in our current crisis — one that fundamentally challenges modern assumptions about what a tolerant, or civil, society should look like.
Bryan Garsten | Harvard, 2009 | Book
This brilliant book explores our discomfort with political persuasion as an irrational appeal to prejudice by tracing the "rhetoric against rhetoric" historically, from Hobbes to Kant and Habermas. Beautifully and clearly written, Garsten's book offers a master-class in historically-informed political theory, recovering an art of persuasive speaking that appeals to one’s fellow-citizens as they are and where they are as a virtue not a vice — and one essential to truly democratic politics.
Benjamin Kaplan | Harvard, 2010 | Book
Kaplan traces the many different strategies of coexistence adopted by European Christians in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. From divided cathedrals to hidden churches, to forest masses and foreign embassies, this fascinating book demonstrates how the toleration of religious differences was widely practiced before it was theorized — and that its "progress" was far from obvious or straightforward. Many of the early modern challenges Kaplan describes are familiar, and the "flashpoints" of conflict recognizable today.
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This talk was presented at a TED Salon event given in partnership with Brightline Initiative. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.
Read more about TED Salons.