Appearing respectful: The moral significance of manners

Ethics

Volumn 109, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 795-826

  Buss, Sarah ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0033163768     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/233946     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. Notice that this thesis is perfectly compatible with the view that the most important function of manners is to maintain social stability and order. After all, it may well be that maintaining social stability and order is the most important function of morality! In claiming that treating people with respect is the point of manners, I mean to be focusing attention on the fundamental internal aim of manners. This aim is compatible with, and may even contribute to, other desirable or undesirable goals - just as the internal aim of religious rituals (very roughly: to promote the worship of God) is compatible with and contributes to many other desirable and undesirable goals. (For more on this point, see the discussion on pp. 805, 809-10.)
2. David Brink expresses a widely shared view when he claims that requirements of etiquette differ from moral requirements because "their inescapability is not grounded in facts about rational agents as such." "Perhaps," Brink speculates, "rational agents . . . need not live under the rule of etiquette at all" (David O. Brink, "Kantian Rationalism: Inescapability, Authority, and Supremacy," in Ethics and Practical Reason, ed. Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], pp. 255-91, p. 281). If, as seems to be the case, Brink means to include rules of manners among the rules of etiquette, then the burden of my article is to show that he is wrong about etiquette, at least where the rational agents at issue are anything remotely like us. In defending a broader conception of our duty to treat people with respect, I will, in effect, be defending a broader conception of the right to be treated with respect. According to Joseph Raz, "one can, and people often do, show disrespect to others, including disrespect which amounts to denying their status as persons, by acts which do not violate rights" (Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom [Oxford: Clarendon, 1986], p. 191). Similarly, Judith Jarvis Thomson speculates that respect for persons may be "something other than respect for their rights. Then the work would remain to be done of saying what it is, and how this or that in morality issues from it" (Judith Jarvis Thomson, The Realm of Rights [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990], p. 211). To my mind, however, to divide disrespectful acts into those that violate a person's rights and those that merely "deny his status as a person" is to obscure the intimate connection between respecting a person's rights and acknowledging his moral status. At the very least, this sort of taxonomy encourages the false belief that we have fulfilled our duty to treat others as ends in themselves as long as we have enabled them to pursue their own morally permissible ends. (Though I agree with Raz that respect for persons should not be confused with respect for their rights, I am persuaded by Cora Diamond's suggestion that a person has rights only because she has moral standing. See Cora Diamond, "Eating Meat and Eating People," in Diamond's The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991], For a discussion of Diamond, see pp. 800-801.) Raz is wrong, I think, to insist that moral rights are "based on" our interests and not, ultimately, on the independent fact that we are persons, ends in ourselves (Raz, p. 189). The moral significance of a person's interests depends on the fact that she has moral significance; our respect for a person's rights is based on the fact that we respect the person herself. (For more on this point, see Sarah Buss, "Respect for Persons," unpublished manuscript.)
3. David Brink expresses a widely shared view when he claims that requirements of etiquette differ from moral requirements because "their inescapability is not grounded in facts about rational agents as such." "Perhaps," Brink speculates, "rational agents . . . need not live under the rule of etiquette at all" (David O. Brink, "Kantian Rationalism: Inescapability, Authority, and Supremacy," in Ethics and Practical Reason, ed. Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], pp. 255-91, p. 281). If, as seems to be the case, Brink means to include rules of manners among the rules of etiquette, then the burden of my article is to show that he is wrong about etiquette, at least where the rational agents at issue are anything remotely like us. In defending a broader conception of our duty to treat people with respect, I will, in effect, be defending a broader conception of the right to be treated with respect. According to Joseph Raz, "one can, and people often do, show disrespect to others, including disrespect which amounts to denying their status as persons, by acts which do not violate rights" (Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom [Oxford: Clarendon, 1986], p. 191). Similarly, Judith Jarvis Thomson speculates that respect for persons may be "something other than respect for their rights. Then the work would remain to be done of saying what it is, and how this or that in morality issues from it" (Judith Jarvis Thomson, The Realm of Rights [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990], p. 211). To my mind, however, to divide disrespectful acts into those that violate a person's rights and those that merely "deny his status as a person" is to obscure the intimate connection between respecting a person's rights and acknowledging his moral status. At the very least, this sort of taxonomy encourages the false belief that we have fulfilled our duty to treat others as ends in themselves as long as we have enabled them to pursue their own morally permissible ends. (Though I agree with Raz that respect for persons should not be confused with respect for their rights, I am persuaded by Cora Diamond's suggestion that a person has rights only because she has moral standing. See Cora Diamond, "Eating Meat and Eating People," in Diamond's The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991], For a discussion of Diamond, see pp. 800-801.) Raz is wrong, I think, to insist that moral rights are "based on" our interests and not, ultimately, on the independent fact that we are persons, ends in ourselves (Raz, p. 189). The moral significance of a person's interests depends on the fact that she has moral significance; our respect for a person's rights is based on the fact that we respect the person herself. (For more on this point, see Sarah Buss, "Respect for Persons," unpublished manuscript.)
4. David Brink expresses a widely shared view when he claims that requirements of etiquette differ from moral requirements because "their inescapability is not grounded in facts about rational agents as such." "Perhaps," Brink speculates, "rational agents . . . need not live under the rule of etiquette at all" (David O. Brink, "Kantian Rationalism: Inescapability, Authority, and Supremacy," in Ethics and Practical Reason, ed. Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], pp. 255-91, p. 281). If, as seems to be the case, Brink means to include rules of manners among the rules of etiquette, then the burden of my article is to show that he is wrong about etiquette, at least where the rational agents at issue are anything remotely like us. In defending a broader conception of our duty to treat people with respect, I will, in effect, be defending a broader conception of the right to be treated with respect. According to Joseph Raz, "one can, and people often do, show disrespect to others, including disrespect which amounts to denying their status as persons, by acts which do not violate rights" (Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom [Oxford: Clarendon, 1986], p. 191). Similarly, Judith Jarvis Thomson speculates that respect for persons may be "something other than respect for their rights. Then the work would remain to be done of saying what it is, and how this or that in morality issues from it" (Judith Jarvis Thomson, The Realm of Rights [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990], p. 211). To my mind, however, to divide disrespectful acts into those that violate a person's rights and those that merely "deny his status as a person" is to obscure the intimate connection between respecting a person's rights and acknowledging his moral status. At the very least, this sort of taxonomy encourages the false belief that we have fulfilled our duty to treat others as ends in themselves as long as we have enabled them to pursue their own morally permissible ends. (Though I agree with Raz that respect for persons should not be confused with respect for their rights, I am persuaded by Cora Diamond's suggestion that a person has rights only because she has moral standing. See Cora Diamond, "Eating Meat and Eating People," in Diamond's The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991], For a discussion of Diamond, see pp. 800-801.) Raz is wrong, I think, to insist that moral rights are "based on" our interests and not, ultimately, on the independent fact that we are persons, ends in ourselves (Raz, p. 189). The moral significance of a person's interests depends on the fact that she has moral significance; our respect for a person's rights is based on the fact that we respect the person herself. (For more on this point, see Sarah Buss, "Respect for Persons," unpublished manuscript.)
5. David Brink expresses a widely shared view when he claims that requirements of etiquette differ from moral requirements because "their inescapability is not grounded in facts about rational agents as such." "Perhaps," Brink speculates, "rational agents . . . need not live under the rule of etiquette at all" (David O. Brink, "Kantian Rationalism: Inescapability, Authority, and Supremacy," in Ethics and Practical Reason, ed. Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], pp. 255-91, p. 281). If, as seems to be the case, Brink means to include rules of manners among the rules of etiquette, then the burden of my article is to show that he is wrong about etiquette, at least where the rational agents at issue are anything remotely like us. In defending a broader conception of our duty to treat people with respect, I will, in effect, be defending a broader conception of the right to be treated with respect. According to Joseph Raz, "one can, and people often do, show disrespect to others, including disrespect which amounts to denying their status as persons, by acts which do not violate rights" (Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom [Oxford: Clarendon, 1986], p. 191). Similarly, Judith Jarvis Thomson speculates that respect for persons may be "something other than respect for their rights. Then the work would remain to be done of saying what it is, and how this or that in morality issues from it" (Judith Jarvis Thomson, The Realm of Rights [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990], p. 211). To my mind, however, to divide disrespectful acts into those that violate a person's rights and those that merely "deny his status as a person" is to obscure the intimate connection between respecting a person's rights and acknowledging his moral status. At the very least, this sort of taxonomy encourages the false belief that we have fulfilled our duty to treat others as ends in themselves as long as we have enabled them to pursue their own morally permissible ends. (Though I agree with Raz that respect for persons should not be confused with respect for their rights, I am persuaded by Cora Diamond's suggestion that a person has rights only because she has moral standing. See Cora Diamond, "Eating Meat and Eating People," in Diamond's The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991], For a discussion of Diamond, see pp. 800-801.) Raz is wrong, I think, to insist that moral rights are "based on" our interests and not, ultimately, on the independent fact that we are persons, ends in ourselves (Raz, p. 189). The moral significance of a person's interests depends on the fact that she has moral significance; our respect for a person's rights is based on the fact that we respect the person herself. (For more on this point, see Sarah Buss, "Respect for Persons," unpublished manuscript.)
6. According to Kant, "The respect which I bear others or which another can claim from me . . . is the acknowledgment of the dignity (dignitas) of another man, i.e., a worth which has no price, no equivalent for which the object of valuation (aestimii) could be exchanged" (Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, Part II: The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, in Ethical Philosophy, trans. James W. Ellington [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983], p. 127). There are passages in which Kant suggests that in order to acknowledge a person's dignity, it is not enough to accommodate our ends to hers. Thus, he writes, "Holding up to ridicule real faults or faults attributed as real with the intention of depriving a person of his deserved respect, and the propensity to do this, may be called bitter derision (spiritus causticus). . . . [It is] a severe violation of the duty to respect other men" (p. 132). (I thank an editor of this journal for calling my attention to this passage.) At the same time, however, Kant seems to reject my interpretation of the relation between morals and manners insofar as he claims that "I am not bound to venerate others (regarded merely as men), i.e., to show them positive reverence. The only respect which I am bound to by nature is that for the law generally (reverere legem)" (p. 133).
7. Judith Martin, Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior (New York: Warner Books, 1983), p. 13. There are actually two points here, each of which Miss Manners stresses on many occasions. First, as Philippa Foot points out, "moral judgment concerns itself with a man's reasons for acting as well as with what he does. Law and etiquette require only that certain things are done or left undone" (Philippa Foot, "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives," Philosophical Review 81 [1972]: 305-16, p. 312). Second, "in manners, as distinct from morals . . . the only recognized act is one that has been witnessed" (Martin, p. 249). In an interesting article, Julia Driver challenges the view that the stress on appearance distinguishes etiquette from morality. Appearing to be virtuous, she argues, can be essential to really being virtuous (see her "Caesar's Wife: On the Moral Significance of Appearing Good," Journal of Philosophy 89 [1992]: 331-43).
8. Judith Martin, Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior (New York: Warner Books, 1983), p. 13. There are actually two points here, each of which Miss Manners stresses on many occasions. First, as Philippa Foot points out, "moral judgment concerns itself with a man's reasons for acting as well as with what he does. Law and etiquette require only that certain things are done or left undone" (Philippa Foot, "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives," Philosophical Review 81 [1972]: 305-16, p. 312). Second, "in manners, as distinct from morals . . . the only recognized act is one that has been witnessed" (Martin, p. 249). In an interesting article, Julia Driver challenges the view that the stress on appearance distinguishes etiquette from morality. Appearing to be virtuous, she argues, can be essential to really being virtuous (see her "Caesar's Wife: On the Moral Significance of Appearing Good," Journal of Philosophy 89 [1992]: 331-43).
9. Judith Martin, Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior (New York: Warner Books, 1983), p. 13. There are actually two points here, each of which Miss Manners stresses on many occasions. First, as Philippa Foot points out, "moral judgment concerns itself with a man's reasons for acting as well as with what he does. Law and etiquette require only that certain things are done or left undone" (Philippa Foot, "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives," Philosophical Review 81 [1972]: 305-16, p. 312). Second, "in manners, as distinct from morals . . . the only recognized act is one that has been witnessed" (Martin, p. 249). In an interesting article, Julia Driver challenges the view that the stress on appearance distinguishes etiquette from morality. Appearing to be virtuous, she argues, can be essential to really being virtuous (see her "Caesar's Wife: On the Moral Significance of Appearing Good," Journal of Philosophy 89 [1992]: 331-43).
10. David Hume, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, in Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, 3d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), sec. 8, pp. 169-346, p. 261.
11. Ibid.
12. It may well be, of course, that a person will have a better chance of creating this appearance if she really does care about the others. I owe this point to Jonathan Adler.
13. Diamond, p. 324.
14. Ibid., p. 325.
15. Ibid., p. 326. A difficulty for this account of the moral status of human beings is that it does not seem to allow for the possibility of a moral critique of the practices which contribute to the conception of what it is to be human. My own view is that our practices are not the only thing to which we can appeal to defend our views about what we owe one another. I take this for granted at the end of the article, when I call into question the requirement that people "mind their own business."
16. Ibid., p. 330.
17. Ibid., p. 331.
18. Ibid., p. 324. ("We are around the table and they are on it.")
19. Hume, p. 262.
20. Note that this answer is compatible with the fact that the pain we experience in being treated rudely is often, in part, the pain of being shunned, rejected, treated as an outsider. I will refer later to the capacity of manners to define in-groups. For now, it suffices to stress that the reason why it is so painful to be treated as an outsider is that this is one way of being treated as though one has less intrinsic worth than the insiders.
21. Note that an acknowledgment of dignity can be both direct and indirect. Thus, e.g., asking permission to smoke is both a way of saying, "You are worthy of respect," and a way of adjusting one's ends to the ends of others.
22. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971 ), p. 440.
23. As Henry Richardson has reminded me, international negotiations provide a vivid example of how important good manners are in this regard.
24. Lawrence Becker, "The Finality of Moral Judgments: A Reply to Mrs. Foot," Philosophical Review 82 (1973): 364-70, p. 369.
25. Julia Driver has called my attention to a second situation of this sort. Suppose that Bob is a master criminal whom many young men admire and wish to emulate. And suppose that near the end of his life, he has a change of heart and wishes to discourage this admiration. Bob might ask others to treat him disrespectfully in order to make his position seem less desirable. Driver suggests that those who honored Bob's request would, in fact, be treating him with respect. It seems to me, however, that this is not the right way to describe the situation. Even if one's reason for treating someone rudely is because this is necessary to save his life or to accommodate his wishes, in treating him rudely one fails to treat him with respect. Examples such as Driver's simply show that direct and indirect acknowledgment are sometimes incompatible, and that it is thus not always possible to treat someone with respect. Polite behavior's essential role in treating people with respect is compatible with the fact that a person can "betray his superficiality and small-mindedness by his overemphasis on good manners where their display is incompatible with deeper values(Felicia Ackerman, "A Man by Nothing Is So Well Betrayed as by His Manners: Politeness as a Virtue," Midwest Studies in Philosophy 13 [1998]: 250-58, p. 257).
26. It is unclear to me just when failures of indirect acknowledgment render attempts at direct acknowledgment fruitless. It seems, e.g., that a master can succeed in treating his slave politely, despite failing to accommodate her most basic interests. But perhaps this is true only insofar as the rights violation consists of the basic fact that he owns her. If he were to rape her, his courteous behavior the next day would surely add insult to injury.
27. The phrase comes from Foot.
28. Foot herself makes this point when she calls attention to the sense in which imperatives of etiquette are categorical.
29. At the end of the article, I remind the reader that though our options for avoiding rudeness are relatively restricted, codes of polite behavior provide us with more than one script for most occasions.
30. The importance of this point was called to my attention by Alexander Nehamas.
31. Martin, p. 10. According to Gabriele Taylor, embarrassment is occasioned by "failures to present oneself in an appropriate manner to a given audience" (Gabriele Taylor, Pride, Shame, and Guilt: Emotions of Self-assessment [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985], p. 74). "The overall demand of the situation [that inspires embarrassment] is always that [the person] make a certain impression or correct a certain impression which he thinks the audience is left with either because of his own behavior or because of the behavior of a member of his group with whom he thinks he will be identified" (p. 75).
32. Charles P. Flynn, Insult and Society: Patterns of Comparative Interaction (Port Washington, N.Y: Kennikat, 1977), p. 44.
33. Ibid., p. 45. Felicia Ackerman acknowledges that such cases are "debased" "systems of politeness." "At most," she claims, "this seems to be a one-way system of politeness, where members of the subordinate class have obligations to members of the superior class, but not vice-versa" (Ackerman, p. 253). My point is that such "one-way systems" can be criticized from the point of view of manners itself for encouraging certain people to treat others impolitely.
34. Insofar as the code of the Indian caste system is intended to ensure certain people against contamination by others, those who live by ihe code do not take it to be a code of manners. But it is important to see that this is irrelevant to whether it can be criticized from the point of view of manners - just as it is irrelevant to whether it can be criticized from the point of view of morality.
35. As Ronald Dworkin puts it, the duty to treat people as equals is not the duty to treat them equally (Ronald Dworkin, "DeFunis v. Sweatt," in Equality and Preferential Treatment, ed. Marshall Cohen et al. [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977], pp. 67-68).
36. I thank the members of Philamore for helping me to appreciate the extent and the nature of this disagreement.
37. Note that the person who defends this view might be willing to say that a man who refrains from holding the door open for a woman behaves "impolitely." But by this he will only mean that such behavior is widely thought to be impolite by those in the man's community.
38. Elijah Anderson, "The Code of the Street: How the Inner-city Environment Fosters a Need for Respect and a Self-image Based on Violence," Atlantic Monthly (May 1994), p. 89.
39. Ibid., p. 92.
40. Sanyika Shakur, Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member (New York: Penguin, 1993), p. 102.
41. Anderson, p. 92.
42. A second code which seems to have had this characteristic was the code of southern honor. Flynn recounts the following tale of what happened to "a transplanted northerner who was not fully socialized to the stringent norms governing interaction with upperclass women." A judge was playing cards with two ladies and another judge. "As the game progressed, one of the ladies exclaimed [and here Flynn quotes directly from his source, Harnett Kane, Gentlemen, Swords, and Pistols]: 'Judge Selden, we have the tricks and honors on you!' Judge Selden blinked. Even the fact that he came from the North did not require him to accept an obvious error. 'That is not so,' said Judge Selden, quietly. The lady, very much mortified at the ungracious reply, put up her handkerchief to hide her quivering lips, and also her aggrieved ladyhood. The other judge at the card table immediately defended the lady's honor by challenging Judge Selden, without the formal preliminaries, to a duel. Several days later Selden was killed on the field of honor" (Flynn, p. 51).
43. Martin, p. 100.
44. I thank Maggie Little for reminding me of this sad fact.
45. As Miss Manners explains, "If the urge overwhelms you, it is better to write leaflets and hand them out to strangers on the street, than to offend your friends by giving them unsolicited advice" (Martin, p. 520). Susan Wolf has suggested to me that the requirement to mind one's own business is a peculiarly WASPy requirement. The important point for my purposes, however, is that it is a widely accepted requirement, deeply entrenched in many societies. More importantly still, no matter how widely accepted or deeply entrenched it may be, it is useful to consider whether it can be reconciled with our duty to treat one another as ends.
46. Kant, of course, makes this point in the Groundwork (Immanuel Kant, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton [New York: Harper & Row, 1964]). See, esp., his third illustrations of both the formula of the universal law and the formula of the end in itself, pp. 90-91, 98 . For an interesting discussion of Kant's views regarding our duty to come to one another's aid, see Barbara Herman "Mutual Aid and Respect for Persons," in Herman's The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 45-72.
47. Kant, of course, makes this point in the Groundwork (Immanuel Kant, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton [New York: Harper & Row, 1964]). See, esp., his third illustrations of both the formula of the universal law and the formula of the end in itself, pp. 90-91, 98 . For an interesting discussion of Kant's views regarding our duty to come to one another's aid, see Barbara Herman "Mutual Aid and Respect for Persons," in Herman's The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 45-72.
48. David B. Guralink, ed., Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, 2d College ed. (Cleveland: William Collins, 1979), p. 1126.
49. The following discussion was prompted by a question from Alexander Nehamas.
50. This is a point which opponents of paternalism will not let us forget.
51. For a discussion of the relation between care and respect from the perspective of an ethics of care, see Robin Dillon, "Respect and Care: Toward Moral Integration," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (1992): 105-31.
52. In making this point, I mean to leave open the question of whether a special emotional component is essential to the sort of caring that is contrasted with indifference.
53. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (New York: Penguin, 1979), pp. 142-44.
54. George Eliot, Middlemarch (London: Penguin, 1965), p. 789.
55. Ibid., p. 790.
56. Ibid., p. 791.
57. Ibid., pp. 817-18.
58. Ibid., p. 819.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid., p. 820.
61. Ibid., p. 823.
62. Ibid., p. 846.
63. Ibid., p. 854.
64. Ibid., p. 861.
65. Ibid., p. 846.
66. See Mill, p. 174: "When a person, either by express promise or by conduct, has encouraged another to rely on his continuing to act in a certain way - to build expectations and calculations, and stake any part of his plan of life upon that supposition - a new series of moral obligations arises on his part towards that person, which may possibly be overruled, but cannot be ignored."
67. Eliot, p. 855. As Jonathan Adler has reminded me, it is relatively easy for us to be confident that Dorothea's behavior is morally praiseworthy because Eliot gives us a clear view of her heroine's motives. But my point about the resources of manners is, in part, that even without this clear view, there are countless aspects of a person's behavior that can give us insight into whether she is acting from benevolent motives and with a due appreciation of the value of acknowledging the dignity of other human beings.
68. I am assuming here that the discomfort we feel at breaking a rule of manners, and risking another person's wrath and contempt, is not a significant cost. Perhaps this assumption is not justified. If so, then I would need to explain why it is proper to assimilate this discomfort to the discomfort of a very selfish person who would suffer greatly if she had to alter her plans to help someone in need.