Derek Edyvane - Böcker

Politeness is political. It is easy to disregard our everyday, street-level interactions and the politeness, or impoliteness, by which they are marked, but those interactions determine the quality of the social atmosphere we inhabit, and democracies cannot flourish without an atmosphere congenial to their ends. We must therefore enlarge our understanding of citizenship to encompass the democracy of everyday living, and we must learn to think politically about the dilemmas of politeness it presents.The Politics of Politeness develops the first sustained account of 'ordinary citizenship'. Arguing for the political significance of everyday urban interactions, Edyvane proposes an interpretation of politeness as civility and as a key political practice for democracies. Against recent conceptualisations of polite civility as a 'communicative' virtue, the book elaborates an innovative 'ceremonial' account that takes seriously the ritual-like character of polite interaction, and its embeddedness in a larger civilisational discourse.Drawing on an eclectic range of sources from empirical ethnography to novels and TV shows, the book offers a new perspective on familiar dilemmas of everyday politeness. What should you do when codes of manners embarrassingly clash? Should you say something when a shop assistant slights another customer, or should you mind your own business? How should you finesse awkward encounters with beggars and vagrants? And is there ever any place for rudeness in polite society? By treating these dilemmas as political problems, as problems of democratic citizenship, we gain fresh insight into them: into why they matter, and how to navigate them more wisely.

The problem of how we are to live together in morally and culturally diverse democratic societies is central to modern life. Over the last thirty years, an extensive philosophical literature has developed around the idea of toleration as a way of engaging with that problem. However, recent years have witnessed a growing backlash against the idea of toleration, which is often considered too ‘thin’, or too unambitious an aspiration for liberal democracy. This timely collection of essays from an international field of experts in the history and philosophy of toleration takes stock of this debate and offers a distinctive reassessment of the place of toleration in contemporary political life. Against the general climate of scepticism, the message that emerges from these essays is that toleration remains an extremely powerful idea, and one that must remain central to the political enterprise of forging social unity amid diversity in the twenty-first century.This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy.

The last decade has witnessed a growing perception of ethical crisis in public life. Circumstances of political uncertainty, fueled by the rise of international terror and global financial crisis, have placed the practice of civic virtue under severe strain. Our turbulent times have prompted many people to think less about the "good life" and the "good society" and more about their basic needs for safety and reassurance. Consequently, while prominent public commentators call for the reassertion of civic virtue in the public square, it is very hard to see what basis there can be for its practice in present conditions. This book articulates a new perspective on public morality in uncertain times by defending a radical re-orientation of civic ethics away from the pursuit of the good society and toward the prevention of the great evils of human life. Edyvane makes the following central innovations: Uses the resources of philosophy to help us think about vital social, political, and spiritual questions that have dominated the public conversation of liberal democracies since 9/11; Offers a new perspective on key scholarly debates about civic virtue in a way that provokes disquieting questions about the character of religious diversity and conflict and the nature of foundations of public morality; Develops and deploys a novel intellectual approach by drawing on the insights of art and literature to inform and enrich philosophical enquiry.

The problem of how we are to live together in morally and culturally diverse democratic societies is central to modern life. Over the last thirty years, an extensive philosophical literature has developed around the idea of toleration as a way of engaging with that problem. However, recent years have witnessed a growing backlash against the idea of toleration, which is often considered too ‘thin’, or too unambitious an aspiration for liberal democracy. This timely collection of essays from an international field of experts in the history and philosophy of toleration takes stock of this debate and offers a distinctive reassessment of the place of toleration in contemporary political life. Against the general climate of scepticism, the message that emerges from these essays is that toleration remains an extremely powerful idea, and one that must remain central to the political enterprise of forging social unity amid diversity in the twenty-first century.This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy.