A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues

1
POLITENESS
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, and possibly something other than a virtue as well. In any case, as virtues go it's a small one, an easy virtue, one might say, as used to be said in reference to certain women. Politeness doesn't care about morality, and vice versa. If a Nazi is polite, does that change anything about Nazism or the horrors of Nazism? No. It changes nothing, and this nothing is the very hallmark of politeness. A virtue of pure form, of etiquette and ceremony! A show of virtue, its appearance and nothing more.




Politeness is certainly a value, but it is an ambiguous one, insufficient in itself. It can clothe both the best and the worst, which makes it suspect. Such attention to form must be hiding something, but what? Politeness is artifice and we tend to be wary of artifice; it is an adornment and we tend to be wary of adornments. Diderot speaks somewhere of the "insulting politeness" of those on high; one might also mention the obsequious or servile politeness of those below. Unadorned contempt and crass obedience seem preferable.
But that's not the worst of it. A polite bastard is no less vile than any other bastard and in fact may be more vile. Is it because he is also a hypocrite ? Probably not: politeness makes no moral claims for itself. A polite bastard, moreover, could just as easily be cynical without being any less polite or any less wicked for it. So what is it about him that shocks us? It's the contrast, undoubtedly, but not the contrast between an appearance of virtue and virtue's absence (which would be hypocrisy): our hypothetical bastard really is polite—besides, there's no difference between seeming to be polite and actually being so. The contrast is rather between the appearance of one virtue (in the case of politeness, appearance is reality: what you see is all there is) and the absence of all others; or, better yet, between the appearance of virtue and the presence of vice—in this case meanness, arguably the only true vice. Yet, taken in isolation, the contrast is more aesthetic than moral, which would explain why we respond to polite villainy with surprise rather than horror, astonishment rather than disapproval. There is, of course, an ethical dimension to the contrast: politeness makes the wicked person even more hateful because it implies a good upbringing, in the absence of which the wickedness might have been somehow excusable. The polite bastard is no wild animal, quite the opposite, and wild animals we generally do not resent; he is anything but unsocialized, and those who are we tend to find excuses for. He is the very antithesis of the crude, coarse, ignorant brute, who may frighten us, to be sure, but whose native and shortsighted violence can at least be explained by his lack of education. The polite bastard is not an animal, or a savage, or a brute. On the contrary, he is civilized, educated, well bred; there is no excuse for him, you could say. With the boor, who can tell whether he's ill-intentioned or simply ill-mannered? Genteel torturers, however, never leave us in doubt. Just as blood is more visible on white gloves, so horror is more apparent when it is also civilized. Nazis, at least some of them, are said to have excelled in this role. And, indeed, part of the ignominy we associate with the Nazis has to do precisely with this mixture of barbarism and civilization, of violence and courtesy; with this cruelty that was sometimes polite, sometimes bestial, but always cruel, and more blameworthy perhaps for its politeness, more inhuman for its human forms, more barbaric for its gestures of civility.
I have digressed, perhaps, but not so much by accident as out of vigilance: the important thing about politeness is, first of all, not to be taken in by it. Politeness is not virtue and cannot take the place of virtue.
In that case, why call it the first of the virtues, the origin of all the others? The contradiction is not as great as it may appear to be. The origin of the virtues cannot be a virtue (for if it were, it would itself require an origin, but then it could not be the origin it requires); it may be of the very essence of the virtues that the first one is not virtuous.
But why is politeness the first? The priority I have in mind is not cardinal but temporal: politeness comes before the other virtues in the sense that it serves as a foundation for the moral development of the individual. A newborn baby doesn't have and can't have moral standards. Nor does an infant or, for quite some time, a small child. What the small child does discover, however, and discovers quite early on, is prohibition. "Don't do that: it's nasty; it's bad; it's not nice; it's naughty …" Or else, "It's dangerous." Very soon he comes to learn the difference between what's simply bad (a misdeed) and what is also bad for him (a danger), between the hateful and the harmful. A misdeed is a strictly human evil, an evil that does no harm (at least not to the person who commits it), an evil without immediate or intrinsic danger. But then why is it prohibited, why must it not be done? Because. Because that's the way it is; because it's nasty, it's not nice, it's naughty, and so forth. For children, fact precedes right; or rather, right and wrong are simply facts themselves, like any others. Some things are allowed, some are forbidden; some things are done, some are not done. Good or bad? The rule suffices; it precedes judgment and is the basis for it. But then does the rule have no foundation other than convention, no justification other than usage and the respect for usage? Yes, it is a de facto rule, a rule of pure form, a rule of politeness! Don't say bad words; don't interrupt people; don't shove; don't steal; don't lie. To the child, all these prohibitions appear identical ("It's not nice"). The distinction between the ethical and the aesthetic will come only later, and gradually. Politeness thus precedes morality, or rather, morality at first is nothing more than politeness: a compliance with usage and its established rules, with the normative play of appearances—a compliance with the world and the ways of the world.
Now, a principle of Kantian ethics is that one cannot deduce what one should do from what is done. Yet the child in his early years is obliged to do just that, and it is only in this way that he becomes human. Kant himself concedes as much. "Man can only become man by education," he writes. "He is merely what education makes him," and the process begins with discipline, which "changes animal nature into human nature."1 What better way to say it? Custom precedes value; obedience, respect; and imitation, duty. Hence politeness ("one doesn't do that") precedes morality ("one shouldn't do that"); morality only comes into being little by little, as an internalized politeness that has freed itself from considerations of appearance and interest and focuses entirely on intentions (which politeness doesn't concern itself with). But how could this morality ever come into being if politeness were not there to begin with? Good manners precede and prepare the way for good deeds. Morality is like a politeness of the soul, an etiquette of the inner life, a code of duties, a ceremonial of the essential. Conversely, politeness can be likened to a morality of the body, an ethics of comportment, a code for life in society, a ceremonial of the inessential. "Paper money," Kant says, but it's better than nothing and it would be as crazy to do away with it as to mistake it for real gold.2 "Small change," he also says, merely the appearance of virtue, yet that which renders it "comely."3 And what child would ever become virtuous without this appearance and comeliness?
So morality starts at the bottom—with politeness. But it has to start somewhere. There are no natural virtues; hence we must become virtuous. How? "For the things we have to learn before we can do them," Aristotle explains, "we learn by doing them."4 Yet how can we do them if we haven't learned them? There are two ways out of this circular causality: apriority is one way, politeness is the other. But apriority is beyond our reach; politeness is not. "We become just," Aristotle continues, "by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts."5 But can we act justly without being just? Temperately without being temperate? Bravely without being brave? And if we cannot, then how do we become just, temperate, brave? Through habit, Aristotle seems to say, but that answer is obviously inadequate: a habit presupposes the prior existence of what we would be making a habit of and therefore cannot account for it. Kant provides a more helpful answer. For him, these first semblances of virtue can be explained in terms of discipline, in other words, as a product of external constraint: what the child cannot do on his own because he has no instinct for it "others have to do … for him," and in this way "one generation educates the next."6 No doubt. And in the family, what is this discipline if not, first of all, a respect for usages and good manners? A discipline that is more normative than restrictive, it wants not order so much as a certain amiable sociability—not police discipline but polite discipline. It is by mimicking the ways of virtue, that is, through politeness, that we stand a chance of becoming virtuous. "Politeness," La Bruyère notes, "does not always produce kindness of heart, justice, complacency, or gratitude; but it gives to man at least the appearance of it, and makes him seem externally what he really should be."7 Which is why it is insufficient in an adult and necessary in a child. Politeness is only a beginning but at least it is that. To say "please" or "excuse me" is to pretend to be respectful; to say "thank you" is to pretend to be grateful. And it is with this show of respect and this show of gratitude that both respect and gratitude begin. Just as nature imitates art, morality imitates politeness, which imitates morality. "It is in vain to point out to children the meritorious side of actions," Kant says, and obviously he is right.8 But who for that reason would forgo teaching them to be polite? And what would we know about duty without having learned those lessons ourselves? If we can become moral (and for morality even to be possible—and immorality, too, for that matter—it must be the case that we can), it is not through virtue but through education, not for goodness' sake but for form's sake, not for moral reasons but for reasons of politeness. Morality is first artifice, then artifact. By imitating virtue we become virtuous. "For when men play these roles," writes Kant, "virtues are gradually established, whose appearance had up until now only been affected. These virtues ultimately will become part of the actor's disposition."9 Politeness precedes morality and makes it possible. If politeness is the "disposition to represent ourselves as better than we are," as Kant maintains, it is one that tends to make us moral.10 We must first acquire "the appearance and manner of good," not because they are sufficient in themselves but because they can help us attain the thing that they imitate—virtue—and that is acquired only by such imitation.11 "Even the appearance of the good in others must have value for us," Kant also writes, "because in the long run something serious can come from such a play with pretenses which gain respect even if they do not deserve to."12 Without this play of pretenses, this make-believe, the transmission of morals and the development of a moral sense within each of us would not be possible. "States of character arise out of like activities," says Aristotle.13 Politeness is that pretense, or semblance, of virtue from which the virtues arise.
Politeness thus rescues morality from circular causality (without politeness, we would have to be virtuous in order to become virtuous) by creating the conditions necessary for its emergence and even, to some extent, its flourishing. The differences between someone who is perfectly polite and someone who is simply respectful, kindly, and modest are infinitesimal; we end up resembling what we imitate, and politeness imperceptibly leads—or can lead—to morality. Every parent knows this; it's called bringing up one's children. I am well aware that politeness isn't everything, nor even the essential thing. Yet the fact remains that, in everyday language, being well brought up means first of all being polite, which is highly revealing. Were it a matter of courtesy alone, who among us, apart from obsessives or utter snobs, would correct our children a thousand times (A thousand times? What am I saying? Much more than that …) so that they might learn to say "please," "thank you," and "excuse me." But that's how children learn respect, through this training. The word training rubs us the wrong way, I know; but who could do without the thing? Love is not enough when it comes to bringing up children; it's not even enough to make them lovable and loving. Politeness isn't enough either, and that is why both politeness and love are needed. Family upbringing is located, it seems to me, between these two poles, between the smallest virtue, which is not yet morality, and the greatest, which is already something more. Of course, education means more than moral education: children need to acquire language, too. But if politeness is the art of signs, as Alain claims, then learning to speak falls within that domain as well.14 The issue is still usage and respect for usage, usage being proper only to the extent that it continues to be respected. Le bon usage (in English, "proper usage") is the title of Maurice Grevisse's beautiful French grammar, and it could also be the title of a manual of social skills. To do as is done, to say as is said. It is revealing that in both cases we speak of correctness, which is nothing more than minimal and, as it were, obligatory politeness. Virtue and style come only later.
Politeness, then, is not a virtue but a simulacrum that imitates virtue (in adults) and paves the way for it (in children). Politeness in the child may not be different in nature from politeness in the adult, but it is different in its significance. In the child, it is essential; in the adult it is inessential. What could be worse than an ill-mannered child, except perhaps a wicked adult? We aren't children anymore. We know how to love, how to will, and how to judge. And so we are capable of virtue, and of love, for which politeness is no substitute. Better a generous oaf than a polite egoist, an honorable lout than a refined scoundrel. Politeness, Alain says, is merely a calisthenics of self-expression; in other words, it is of the body, while the important things are of the heart and of the soul.15 There are even some people whose politeness disturbs us in its perfection. Indeed, consummate politeness smacks of insincerity, for honesty sometimes demands that we displease, shock, or offend those around us. We all know people like this, people who, for all their honesty, will remain prisoners of good manners all their lives, not revealing themselves to others except from behind a glazed screen of politeness, as though having once and for all confused truth and decorum. If taken too seriously, politeness is the opposite of authenticity. People preoccupied with decorum can be like grown-up children, too well-behaved, too rule-conscious, the dupes of custom and propriety. What they seem to have missed out on is that process by which we become men and women, namely adolescence—beautiful, marvelous, uncivil adolescence that relegates politeness to its proper insignificance, that has no use for usages and loves only love, truth, and virtue! Today's adolescent will be tomorrow's adult, more indulgent, wiser perhaps, and better behaved. Yet if one absolutely has to choose one kind of immaturity over another, better an overgrown adolescent—from a moral standpoint—than a child who is too obedient to grow up. It is better to be too honest to be polite than to be too polite to be honest!
There is more to life than good manners; and politeness is not morality. Yet it is not nothing. Politeness is a small thing that paves the way for great things. It is ritual without God; ceremonial without religion; protocol without monarchy. An empty form whose sole value lies in that very emptiness. A self-satisfied politeness, one that takes itself too seriously and believes in itself, is one that, taken in by its own manners, falls short of the very rules it prescribes. Self-satisfaction, always impolite, is particularly amiss in something as insufficient as politeness.




Politeness is not a virtue but a quality, and a purely formal one at that. Taken on its own, it is secondary, negligible, nearly insignificant; next to virtue or intelligence it is nothing, and that is what politeness, with its exquisite reticence, must know how to express as well. It is quite clear, however, that intelligent, virtuous persons are not exempt from its obligations. Even love cannot dispense with form entirely, and that it cannot is something children must learn from their parents, their parents who love them—even if too much, even if badly—and who nonetheless are forever correcting them with regard to form. Philosophers will argue over whether form isn't really everything, whether the distinction between morality and politeness isn't merely an illusion. It could be that usage and respect for usage is all there is—that politeness is everything. Yet I believe nothing of the sort. Love holds its own, and so does gentleness and so does compassion. Politeness is not everything; indeed it is almost nothing. Almost, but not quite: for man, too, is almost an animal.
Copyright © 1996 André Comte-Sponville