Comment here on the 1st chapter of
A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues. To start with, do you think that Comte-Sponville is right that politeness "serves as a foundation for the moral development of the individual"? With what else do you agree? Disagree?
I must admit that when I first began to read Comte-Sponville's account of politeness that I was a bit concerned. In the prologue, the author states that, prior to writing this book, he began with an original list of 30 virtues that he was eventually forced to narrow down to a resolute 18. He notes that his decision to begin with politeness was intentional, and that politeness precedes morality. That being said, I was halfway expecting politeness to be of the utmost importance and was quite surprised when Comte-Sponville begins the chapter by stating that “[politeness] is the poorest, the most superficial, and the most debatable of the virtues”. He even ends the chapter by concluding that “Politeness is not a virtue but a quality, and a purely formal one at that.” Why, then, is politeness the first of the author’s hallowed virtues? Is it nothing more than empty words?
ReplyDeleteUltimately, politeness is an aesthetic quality that can easily be faked. It demonstrates how we as human beings should act, but it gives no indication of how we actually feel. I felt that one of Comte-Sponville’s most interesting points in this chapter was that politeness can sometimes make us perceive people as worse than they actually are; we much prefer to view villains as impolite, and therefore perhaps not as responsible for their actions, than as civilized, polite individuals who are well aware that their actions are wrong. What good, then, does politeness bring about? I agree wholeheartedly with the author’s eventual point that politeness is technically the first of the virtues in the sense that “it serves as a foundation for the moral development of the individual.” While politeness is nothing more than a nicety in adults, it is absolutely essential to the development of a moral character in children; the author supports this by stating that there are no natural virtues, and that we must develop them by mirroring virtuous actions. Comte-Sponville quotes Aristotle to mirror this point: “We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.” This implies that the only way for human beings to become virtuous is for parents to constantly instill politeness in their children; eventually, as children develop, they will realize that they are not supposed to commit wrongdoing simply because they will get in trouble, but because it stands in direct contradiction to the other virtues.
To answer my original question, I feel that the author aptly demonstrates that politeness is much more than just empty words, especially in children. We must remember, however, that politeness is not even remotely close to being the most important of the virtues, and all others take precedence before it. “Better a generous oaf than a polite egoist,” says Comte-Sponville.
Andrea: excellent post--a good first example for the class.
ReplyDelete"Politeness is the first virtue, and the origin perhaps of all the others. It is also the poorest, the most superficial, and the most debatable of the virtues." Comte-Sponville introduces the primary virtue discussed within the treatise with this striking contradiction. Confused, I continued through the reading and throughout, my eyes were opened to exactly what the author was communicating. Comte-Sponville suggests that "[politeness] can clothe both the best and the worse." This dissertation revealed to me that politeness, in fact, can be just a front. A facade. Politeness is something we are taught as children, but in adults may mask a crude identity. Any smooth-talker is polite, but uses this politeness to appear kind-hearted and genuine. Comte-Sponville states plainly, "Politeness is not a virtue and cannot take the place of virtue." Why then has he chosen to commence a treatise on virtues with this "non-virtue?"
ReplyDeleteIn quick response, Comte-Sponville answers my raised question, "it serves as a foundation for the moral development of the individual." Politeness is a set of words and mannerisms we are taught as a child. This idea closely mirrors Brian Tracy's idea that, "“First, you shape your habits, and then your habits shape you.” We are taught as children to be polite, and this "habit" shapes our other virtues. Through politeness, we learn how to be kind and compassionate toward others. Comte-Sponville suggests that politeness and lists of "do's and don't's" serve as our morality before morality is fully developed.
How then can politeness be both the first virtue and the origin of all other virtues? It is clear. Politeness teaches us to be virtuous, but standing alone, reflects nothing more than good discipline.
I agree with Comte-Sponville’s main point in this chapter that politeness is simply (merely) a “show of virtue” (7). Children aren’t capable of doing good for good’s sake—or for being virtuous for virtue’s sake. Children have to learn how to survive before they can think about other people. It makes sense that parents teach children to be polite because they should show other people respect even before they know why they are saying their pleases and thank yous. So of course the parents should do it. The question that has been nagging at me is: does acting polite truly make us want to start being polite? (C-S would say there’s no difference between acting and being polite, but I think I disagree with that.) Do the repeated actions of respect, the mere trappings of respect, help us to truly be more respectful and to understand why that is a good thing? Does acting less selfish help us to think about other people more?
ReplyDeleteMy gut tells me that the answer is yes, that C-T is right. But this creates more worries for me. Politeness brainwashes us into respecting people. Is that okay? Is that right? Is brainwashing good if it is for a good cause? C-T only talks about the part of politeness that deals with consideration for others. But most definitions of politeness include something like “observance of accepted social usage.” Politeness isn’t only about respect, politeness is about conforming to society.
Don’t worry. I don’t mean to go on a non-conformist social anarchist rant or anything. But the idea of politeness also, for some people, includes things that seem like simply rules that don’t have anything to do with respect for others. It’s “polite” to not put your elbows on the dinner table when you’re eating. In what way is this part of “consideration for others?” Your own elbows on the table do not in any way affect the people eating with you. It’s an arbitrary rule that’s only function is possibly to make the dinner table look more tidy since everybody looks more the same.
My point with this tangent is that something about our morals coming from a society-imposed set of politeness rules seems like it could be a problem. I want to think our morals come from something truer, some innate moral compass that points to goodness. But if our set of values comes from society (I don’t think I even need to point out all the evils that various societies have created and accepted.), then that means our very virtues could be completely wrong. Are our morals nothing more than evolved rules of politeness? Nothing more than our justifications of what our parents told us to do? Nothing more than what our brain processed as what would get us an extra cookie or not? I hope not.
Along with Andrea, I agree that I found the most interesting point in Comte-Sponville’s first chapter on politeness to be that politeness, which I always viewed as only an admirable quality amoung individuals, actually makes is view wicked people as more wicked. While Comte-Sponville references Nazism to further this point, I found that after thought there are countless individuals in history that fit this description. The legend surrounding Elizabeth Bathory is a testament to this. It is believed that she bathed in the blood of virgins because she believed that this practice would keep her young and beautiful. As a countess of Hungarian nobility and therefore an educated and well brought up woman, her crime was even more horrific and shocking because of her external venire of politeness. Had she been a homeless beggar woman committing the same acts, her crime would not have been as shocking and despised.
ReplyDeleteI agree that politeness starts as a foundation for morality. We learn through politeness what to do or not to do based on how we are corrected and what is polite or what is impolite. I am not sure that I agree that there is a moral basis for right or wrong within everyone however, so what I question here is morality ever truly more than just politeness? Society dictated that when a Spartan male came of age, killing a slave was virtually required to prove one’s manhood. Today we cringe at this practice but if you grew up in a world where society taught that killing those lesser than you was acceptable and necessary, would inner morality cause us to believe that this was wrong, or would politeness and the ability to conform to what society expects from you truly be the end to this moral development?
Because of this, I have to disagree with Comte-Sponville’s contention that politeness is not a virtue. Despite the justification that politeness is the stepping stone to morality and therefore not a virtue itself, I believe that by making the argument that politeness is how one learns right from wrong as Comte-Sponville do, there is no question that politeness is a virtue. As the foundation for other virtues, it deserves to be in this category as well. If politeness is a stepping stone to morality and morality is simply what society dictates to us what is right and what is wrong, then I would argue that morality and politeness are one in the same.
From what it sounds like, everyone was a little confused at the first sentence of this chapter. And I was among them. Comte-Sponville starts out saying that “Politeness is the first virtue, and the origin of perhaps all others…” (pg. 7). I agreed with this right off the bat. It seems as though it is the stepping stone for all other virtues. But then Comte-Sponville goes on to say that Politeness is “… the poorest, the most superficial, and the most debatable of the virtues” (pg. 7). At this I was taken aback and confused. But I kept reading to discover his explanation.
ReplyDeleteComte-Sponville states that “… Politeness comes before the other virtues in the sense that it serves as a foundation for the moral development of the individual” (pg. 9). This made complete sense to me. One of the first things we are taught as children is to say please and thank you, to hold doors open for people, and to clean up our toys. These teachings, while small, are crucial. A child who is taught to be polite tends to grow up and stay polite. And this sense of politeness is a value (along with a virtue). Job interviews, dates, even just being with family, it is important to be polite in all of these situations and it comes naturally to you when it is ingrained as a small child. When it is the first thing one it taught.
On page 14, Comte-Sponville says “If take too seriously, politeness is the opposite of authenticity…” I agree and disagree with this at the same time. When at family gatherings, my step-mom is completely fake. Fake laugh, forced smile, etc. It drives me nuts. She pretends to be so nice and caring about everyone, but as soon as we are home, she says bad things about all of them. Perhaps she is just trying to be polite. But it makes my skin crawl. (Sorry for the little but of a rant there…) The reason I disagree is my aunt. Everyone thinks she is fake and too nice and caring. But she has a sad past and is just happy she is alive and has the family that she still does. If everyone knew her past, they wouldn’t think she is too nice. She is just appreciating what she has before its gone.
Later on page 14, Comte-Sponville states that politeness is “negligible.” This was just appalling to me. I think that politeness is overlooked as a virtue. I think we take it for granted because everyone is expected to learn it as a child. But when you are having a terrible day and someone holds the door open for you, compliments you, helps you with something you dropped, or something even smaller, it as the ability to brighten your whole day.
So, on some accounts, I agree with Comte-Sponville, on others I disagree. It seems as though this book is going to be an interesting journey through this book.
From Michael
ReplyDeleteI found Comte-Sponville's explanations of politeness's inherent meaninglessness and relationship to the rest of the virtues to be rather thought-provoking and logically sound. I have never thought about politeness in terms of the virtues, and his first chapter definitely provides unique insight. As I thought about politeness, I found links or connections between the development of the virtues and development of the person.
Politeness does, in fact, serve as a foundation or framework for one's moral development. It is a foundation for one's moral world in the same way that utilizing sound, or the capacity to speak and listen to language, is necessary for any advancement in the world of interpreting language. Both developmental processes also seem alike since both are inherently meaningless yet have far-reaching implications on the human person.
Both sound utilization and politeness are centered around observation and imitation. I believe that Comte-Sponville would agree with this two-step process. He praises Kant's description of learning, "'Man can only become man by education." While formal education is not strictly observation and imitation, infants must learn through those means because they have no point of reference for anything in their world, in which to draw inferences. They must accept the world as they see it and learn it by committing it to memory. Evaluating and analyzing their world cannot happen until a child is able to identify with something in the world, with which to make future associations. Even before learning the letters of the alphabet, he or she has already been observing and experimenting in how to produce sound. The ability for locution, which includes properly using one's tongue and lips to form different sound types, must be attained before learning about letters. Letters are nothing more than visual representations for sounds. Later, a child learns how to use those letters in a way that is entirely his or her own to form sentences, paragraphs, and essays. However, it all starts with just learning how to identify sounds that are present in the environment. It just requires fine tuning through observing other people use their lips and tone to speak and experimenting sound production on their own. This same dynamic is true of politeness. Children enter the world without any point of reference for behavior. They learn behaviors by watching their parents, siblings, and others in society. In fact, politeness is more dependent on this dynamic than sound manipulation because the listening half of utilizing sounds comes biologically. Only speaking part requires learning via observation and imitation.
Both utilizing sound and politeness have no real value by themselves. Listening to sound and using it to speak are not often considered a part of learning language and writing and have no meaning. The garbled sounds from a baby do not constitute language. "Please" and "thank you," the simplest parts of being polite that a child learns, have no intrisic meaning. If somone would ask why they say "please" after saying "pass the salt," the answer would be because it is polite. It turns out to be a meaningless paradox.
from Michael (con't)
ReplyDeleteDespite the concrete meaninglessness of being polite, both sound and polite gestures are required for further development in using language and being virtuous respectively. The random noises an infant puts that infant closer may be meaningless, but they are needed to make words that can be understood on a meaningful level. Comte-Sponville similarly states that politeness is not a virtue but is a prerequisite for virtue. If a child who never learned "please" or "thank you" or any kind of observable manner associated with being respectful, they cannot be respectful if someone told them to do it. As discussed in the beginning of the second paragraph, one cannot work with something without first knowing what it is they are supposed to be workingwith. In the same way, someone who is deaf has difficulty making coherent words without additional and personal instruction. They have never been exposed to sound before.
Comte-Sponville also says that while infants are praised for their politeness, adults who are simply polite on the outside and not virtuous on the inside are, in fact, perceived worse than those who are rude and rough. He contends that we are concerned less with the mean than the sinister or the manipulative. He believes that the contrast between the virtuous exterior and foul interior makes the polite, corrupt person feared more. I agree with this assessment and roughtly fits the analogy. It is all about contrast, and constrast implies expectations between the differences. Someone who has the ability to process and produce sound is expected to change those sounds into understandable and usable language. Since they have the capacity to fully utilize sound, those sounds are expected to turn into language at a certain point in their development. Those who cannot utilize sound are not expected to use sound to learn language. In the case of the deaf, sign language or other mechanical means of communication is the expected means of language learning. The last point is that just as parents expect their child to begin using langauge at a particular time in their development, so it is with the transformation from politeness to virtues. We tend to expect a higher quality of intrinsically virtuous behavior from a twenty-three year old than a nine-year old.
Reiterating some points that were already stated: I agree that Politeness is the "origin" of the other virtues, yet not truly a virtue itself. Maybe I'm the only one who has experienced this, either on the giving or receiving end, several times in life (though I doubt I'm alone in this). There are times that encounter individuals who maybe have wronged me or I'm not fond of, yet I do not act in a manner that displays my dislike for them. I am polite, but it is more out of being socially acceptable and not starting conflict than being genuine. Now, I'm not saying this is right by any means, but it happens and I think it's human nature some times. Not everyone is going to get along with everyone else, yet most of the time they display a sort of formal politeness in order not to stir up any trouble.
ReplyDeleteI really liked when Comte-Sponville brought up the fact that politeness is something that is learned from an early age, hence it is the foundation for the other virtues. We don't do things because we know they are wrong, we don't because we are taught we shouldn't. We do not understand it until we grow older and come to understand and develop the more complex virtues. I never really thought of it like this before, but it makes complete sense to me now that he brought it up. Since reading this chapter, I have been more aware of politeness, my own display of it as well as others, and it has me paying attention to the intentions behind such behavior. I enjoyed this chapter and so far am glad we are reading this book because it has opened my eyes to many virtues that I don't think about on day-to-day basis.
As I was doing some reading for my Modern Europe class this past week, I came upon a passage in the book, A History of the Modern World, about the very first book on politeness and manners being written during the Renaissance in 1528. It was called the Book of the Courtier by Castiglione. Up until then, as my textbook states, politeness and etiquette was not at the forefront of many people's minds. “Hitherto Europeans had generally acted like big children; they spat, belched, and blew their noses without inhibition, snatched at food with their fingers, bawled at each other when aroused, or sulked when their feelings were offended” (Palmer, Colton, and Kramer, 65) We now live in a day and age in which politeness and etiquette books and even websites are everywhere! (“Miss Manners”, “The Gentleman’s Guide to...”, etc.) So does that mean that we are more essentially “moral” than the people of the Middle Ages? Probably not. However, I think it does mean that we in the modern world have more opportunity and exposure to being polite and having good manners, which (as Comte-Sponville implies) allows us less of an excuse for not acting in a “moral” way. I just thought this was an interesting way to possibly look at this topic and since I just recently came across that particular part in my book I thought I might share it.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the chapter about politeness, I cannot help but feel that I should agree with both the author and the majority of my peers who have posted thus far. However, there really isn't much stimulating thought to be had in simply agreeing and as such, I propose to disagree. What if, instead of being some kind of moral building block as Comte-Sponville has suggested, politeness were, instead a simple social contract? An agreement between peers that, when broken, doesn't necessarily, lead to immorality or point out an immoral person, but merely adds to the build up of tension within society. "Callousness and insolence bring to bare unanimous social condemnation, while the simple efforts of politeness are admired; even in those who are otherwise despised" Bryant H. McGill. So if we view politeness as simple efforts that are the converse of callousness and insolence, it seems less of a fundamental building block of overall morality and more of a general common sense (being that one who has common sense is more often than not not insolent or callous).
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, I feel as if someone, in response to this post, might then ask me what, if not politeness, would be the building block of morality? At the risk of sounding overly clichéd, I would respond with the simple answer, "Love" (partially in an attempt to not be excessively wordy as well as mimic the other with his one word policy). Just Sayin'.
I too must agree with Comte-Sponville in his statement that politeness is a foundation upon which we can become virtuous rather than an actual virtue itself. Like Kelsey said, it can be easy to be polite to someone, even if on truly detests that person. The concept of "killing with kindness" is a perfect example of this notion. Just because someone was taught and has retained good manners does not mean they are not evil.
ReplyDeleteI also see John's point in the above post of politeness being a contractual thing between people in society. I mean, after my birthday or some big event in my life in which I receive gifts for, I would much rather just tell the gift senders "Thanks" in person, and I probably will, but it still a requirement of politeness to send a "Thank you" card as well. Thus, in this example, even though I certainly am thankful, the act of sending the card is more of a habit or good manner that everyone expects and not a sincere showing of one's thanks.
I don't think that politeness is really a basis for a moral foundation. So much of politeness is fake and insincere. C-S points out that even the Nazi's were polite to each other. In my opinion, politeness is either sincere politeness towards a person whom you respect or like, or else false politeness towards a person whom you despise. In the first case, it is not difficult to be polite because it is towards somebody who you want to be polite to. In the case where you are being polite to somebody who you despise you are being two-faced, and I do not think that is virtuous. As much as politeness makes society a more comfortable place to live in, I think it would be better if people concentrated more on honesty. I don't think that good manners prepare the way for good deeds. Manners and good deeds are independent variables. There are plenty of Mafia members who put all sorts of emphasis on manners, and their deeds are somewhat questionable, and there is an abundance of redneck, white trash, double-negative-talking, hillbillies who have no manners, but are filled with good deeds. Also, the fact that politeness varies so much from country to country and culture to culture, I have a hard time seeing it as a virtue. I don't care where you are, virtues such as generosity, compassion, humility, and gentleness are universal. In my opinion, politeness is just a social whim that has almost nothing to do with virtue.
ReplyDeleteJJ Ruwe