The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves
Alexandra Hudson (St. Martin’s Press, $39, 416 pages)
Alexandra Hudson wrote her book about civility after witnessing first-hand the incivility in Washington D.C. first hand while working for the Department of Education. Her hardship in government is a blessing for readers, for Hudson might not have written about civility had she not. In an age of speech codes and safe spaces, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves, is an important book. Although it is a tad disappointing that Hudson never quite defines civility, she explains that without it virtue cannot exist, that without it people respond with the appearance of civility such a politeness and manners, poor substitutes for the real thing in Hudson’s telling. Something more robust than being polite is necessary, however, considering human nature: “the human condition is a contradiction, capable of greatness and wretchedness,” as “we are a bundle of desires and impulses that are constantly at cross-purposes” and “the central tension in our nature is between our sociability and our self-love.” She suggests that civility is the ideal that allows mere humans to “overcome our self-love so that we might thrive with others.” Civility, she argues, “promotes the virtue and integrity that enable us to get on well with others” by developing “a correct outlook on others and the world: one that takes personhood and basis respect for others seriously.” Essentially, we cannot treat others virtuously if we do not recognize their humanity. The problem in Hudson’s outlook is that it might conflate the relationship between civility and virtue: does civility promote virtue or does virtue enable civility?
Hudson explores the concept of civility and civil disobedience (invoking Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr) and has a thought-provoking discussion on how civility and inequality can co-exist. Some of the advice is trite (look strangers in the eye, do not offend your host, tell the truth and don’t lie), but we live in an age in which such advice is probably needed. Civility must be a way of life, engendered by reason (thought) and habits (natural actions); Hudson is skeptical of official efforts to enforce civility, and in a pointed chapter mocks former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s unsuccessful legal efforts to police incivility. She says that the lack of civility, in fact, threatens freedom, and that legal efforts are no way to combat the problem of incivility. The problem is within, not outside individuals. What Hudson fails to address adequately is the relationship between religious belief and civility. George Washington was skeptical whether virtue and civility was possible without the transcendental; Hudson seems to avoid exploring the topic in any great detail. The Soul of Civility is part philosophical tract on the virtue of civility, part polemic against the incivility of the age, and part how-to manual, all of which are necessary today.
