The idea of civility has a long history going back as far as ancient Rome, and it admits of a wide range of meanings from simple courtesy to what it means to be “civilized” in terms of education in the entire culture of a civilization. Civility, as I discuss it here, is the social bond which makes it possible for individuals to live in peace in the political and social structures of the modern Western world. When we say today that civility has failed, I take it that that is what we mean by civility.
Civility, of course, cannot account for every aspect of human life in the modern world. Ideas such as human rights, sovereignty, representative government, and the general will have all shaped the structures of our political life. Civility as I present it here and as I believe Montaigne understood it, pertains specifically to social interactions. Society (as I discuss it in chapter 2) is the counterpart of the modern state: a society can be civil to the extent that it is free of the coercive power of the state. Civility is the character that is indispensable for individuals to live in and enjoy the human interactions of a free society.
Civility, then, is not simply good manners and courtesy. It is a complete moral character, including many qualities which we think of today as “virtues” but which, although they were present to one degree or another, were not considered virtues in the pre-modern world. These qualities or dispositions are promise-keeping, generosity, compassion, forgiveness, trust, toleration, openness, sincerity, self-disclosure, and similar qualities which might be called “social virtues.” Civility is supposed to replace the traditional moral virtues as the social bond. When we say that civility has failed, we mean that these qualities are in danger of disappearing and that the social bond is disintegrating.
How and when does this modern notion of civility come on the scene? As Teresa Bejan demonstrates, this concept of civility arose “in early modern attempts to refasten the social bonds severed by the Reformation.” The Reformation destroyed the unity of Christendom, rejecting the authority of tradition in favor of the authority of Scripture alone. At that point, civility comes into existence to replace the tradition as the social bond.
According to Michael Oakeshott, early modern European history was a moment when the civil character became visible and received its classic expression in the Essays of Montaigne. To say that Montaigne “invented” civility is to say that he saw, in the ruins of the tradition, the possibility of a new social bond and that he formed the new civil character out of the fragments of the tradition. He uses historical examples and fragments of ancient philosophy to give expression, in familiar terms, to the new order that he brings into being. He puts the past into the service of his own new philosophical project.
Montaigne constructs this civil character out of the fragments of the shattered classical-Christian tradition, in particular, from classical magnanimity and Christian charity. Montaigne often presents himself as a “third” type, a transformation of and alternative to both classical and Christian types. For example, as Pierre Manent argues, Montaigne transforms classical magnanimity by renouncing honor and he transforms Christian humility by confessing, not his sins, but his mere human weakness. And, as I attempt to show, the centrality of compassion in modern moral discourse has its source in Christian charity.
To say that civility is a philosophical invention does not mean that only the philosopher can be civil or that all must become philosophers in order to be civil. Rather, Montaigne displays this character in the Essays as a new possibility for human being. My claim is that the Essays are the first act of self-conscious civility. Philosophy, as he engages in it, makes his civility self-conscious. But for most people, civility is not, cannot, and should not be self-conscious in this philosophical sense because true reformation must take place at the level of unreflective mores and pre-reflective sensibilities.
The Essays are addressed not only to philosophers but to “the great,” to the gentlemen of his day who are ready to break with the old standards of nobility. Montaigne writes in order to reform the mores of his culture, a reformation for which he must have thought the culture was prepared. He does not present philosophical arguments to persuade his readers to reform themselves: that is why the Essays do not look like philosophy. Rather, he presents himself as an example or type of a new moral character, and the success of the Essays shows that this character was indeed an attractive possibility to his contemporaries. As David Quint argues in The Quality of Mercy, Montaigne’s intention is the transformation of the mores of the nobility through the replacement of valor by mercy and compassion as the standard of noble action. The re-valuations that occur throughout the Essays, especially his preference for the easy over the difficult, point to a “softening” of morals which Montaigne refers to as the “ease” of virtue. Montaigne’s reformation might be described as the replacement of the traditional moral virtues by the qualities of civility.
