Civility in a Time of Deep-Seated Distrust

As this year comes to an end and as our country readies for a peaceful transition of power from a Democratic President to a Republican President, we would each do well to consider why we continue to try to live peaceably with one another.  Even under conditions of deep-seated (racial, ethnic, political, religious, gender) distrust among and between people, we continue to try to live peaceably and to cooperate with one another other.  Why?  If we cannot trust one another, why not simply disband?

Political philosophers have labored over this problem by asking why we should band together in the first place, even under conditions of distrust. One justification for the state and for law is that, without an enforcement mechanism, such as the State, people would not be secure in their person or possessions and could not trust others to work toward common goals or ventures. Civil society has long been considered people’s refuge from a solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short life found in the state of nature. Thomas Hobbes held that the state of nature is an anarchic condition that breeds and encourages antipathy. Rights do not exist in this condition because everything is up for grabs—the greatest claim to things, including life, is determined by might, wit and cunning. Culture and industry are impossible.

Hobbes posited that individuals in this anarchic condition who wish to cooperate with others and coordinate conduct toward common ends could hardly trust others to perform absent some enforcement mechanism—without, that is, an authority, specifically an absolute monarch, with power to make nonperformance more costly than performance. With enforcement in place, cooperation and coordination become possible. Rationally self-interested persons would choose to take their chances in civil society, even under absolute (perhaps despotic) monarchy, over an unstable state of nature.

John Locke subsequently challenged two major premises in Hobbes’ philosophy: (1) the idea that there are no such things as rights in the state of nature, and (2) that an absolute monarchy is compatible with civil society. For Locke, each individual is unquestionably endowed with reason, will, and natural rights. Locke’s state of nature is not a war of all against all. Rather, it is a condition best described as a near-tolerable anarchy, where people are without a common superior. Reason and tolerance are the rule rather than exception. The individual has a right to defend her life and her possessions. Her possessions are merely extensions of her labor. Her labor is merely an extension of herself.

Like Hobbes, Locke considered government necessary, but not because it was the only way to ensure cooperation and coordination among persons. Because individuals are ruled by reason, people enjoy compossible rights (if B cannot sacrifice A as a means to B’s end, A cannot impose her end on B to achieve A’s end). Recognizing this, people are willing and eager to enter cooperative ventures. But something like Hobbes’ war of all against all arises because every person becomes judge in her own case, no one having greater rights than, or claim to authority over, any other person. Legal institutions become necessary to fairly adjudicate disputes concerning competing rights and define the contours of those rights as a means to foster stability and certainty in people’s interactions with one another.

At the heart of political society for Locke lies the social contract. “The only way anyone divests himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst the other. . . .” All members seek to preserve their life and property by entering civil society. Absolute monarchy is antithetical to a free and equal society because an absolute monarch would be judge and enforcer in his or her own case, thus placing him or her in a state of nature with others.  

People enter a social contract by voluntarily consenting to enter civil society—by making a promise. Locke did not flesh out how one logically derives a moral obligation that motivates him or her to act on or keep a promise. Locke just considered it natural that one should keep her word. Immanuel Kant filled this gap.

Kant, like Hobbes, held that moral principles could derive from practical reason. Unlike Hobbes, however, Kant held that moral principles could derive from reason apart from self-interest. Morality is not result oriented for Kant. A moral act is one that is good in itself.

Practical reason generates reasons for action, which do not depend on what one desires or how one feels. For Kant, the categorical imperative generates inescapable moral duties, moral oughts, that people are compelled to act on. Duty is the necessity of an action from respect of law. “Respect of law” is not the source of one’s motive to act, but merely a consequence of the motive. When you see that you have a duty to keep your promise, for example, that rational recognition that you are subject to this requirement produces a feeling of respect for the law derived from reason.

There is a single categorical imperative: “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become universal law.” If one posits the maxim, “I will break my promise because I feel like it,” he or she could hardly imagine a universally recognized rule that states “let everyone break his or her promise whenever he or she feels like it.” A promise has no meaning under such a maxim. Therefore, one has a duty not to act under the maxim.

Even were one convinced that he could universalize the maxim, he would find a contradiction in his will. Kant’s contradiction-in-the-will test requires one to hypothetically—not actually, so as to avoid tying one’s motive to a result—ask whether he could will a world in which people are permitted to break a promise for any reason. No person could rationally will such a world, because he could not rely on any person’s word and no one could rely on his. One has a duty, again, not to act under the maxim.

When a person subjects her maxims to the categorical imperative, she gives law to herself insofar as she checks her actions against a self-imposed normative posture that itself considers the impact of her action, hypothetically, on others. The most salient aspect of Kant’s philosophy lies in its consequence as a matter of practical reason: that rational nature exists as an end in itself. And, therefore, human beings as rational agents ought to be treated as ends in themselves and never as a means.

Lockean political philosophers, Robert Nozick particularly, employ Kant’s moral philosophy to account for Locke’s gap between promise and obligation. The idea of self-ownership treats each individual as an end who rightfully determines the course of conduct most conducive to her own life and well-being. As a corollary, it follows that no person can be used as a means to another’s end, otherwise rights between individuals would be incompossible. Promises are to be kept under this logic because to renege would be to use the promise to achieve the promisor’s ends without the reciprocation envisioned in a contract toward common ends.

Hobbes and Locke share the view that persons can be placed in a state of nature situation in civil society. When, for example, the enforcement branch of government places the citizen’s life in danger, the instinct to preserve one’s life (on Hobbes’ account) or the natural right to preserve one’s life (on Locke’s account) kicks in.

What about when virtue amongst the citizenry is lost? When citizens do not trust one another? When citizens employ law as a tool to disadvantage other citizens? When citizens use law enforcement as a means to their own ends, ends that do not have the public good in mind, but personal gain? For Hobbes, rational self-interest may counsel one to treat others as in a state of nature. For Locke, and considering Kant’s categorical imperative, a promise has been broken, the social contract, that is, has been impugned.

If we cannot count on a minimum amount of civic virtue among the citizenry, how can we trust one another? If we cannot trust one another, what reason has anyone to yield to or respect laws enacted by others, especially laws enacted by an opposing party in the majority? If we cannot trust law enforcement officials to exercise restraint and respect toward people generally, what reason has anyone to yield to or respect law enforcement officials, who are also citizens? If law enforcement officials cannot trust that citizens will generally cooperate and abide official rules or orders, what reason has any law enforcement official to show respect for citizens generally? or to exercise restraint when enforcing the law?  Are we together in civil society or at its precipice, overlooking and stepping closer to a state of nature?

Well, we do not kill each other in droves. Apparently, we want to trust each other.  The whole of human history is an account of ceaseless attempts to live sociably with one another. Now is the time to create an open dialogue on every and any issue—whether race, gender, sexuality, or anything else—in which every person participates.   

Disagreements will arise; disagreement is inevitable.  But disagreement, alone, is not a reason to distrust others or to cut-off further discussion.  A selective ‘taken-for-granted’ or ‘taken-as-given’ ripens into incivility. But civility is exactly what is needed to resolve our disagreements. Civility is possible only when persons within a circumscribed polity are willing to take each other’s concerns, beliefs, and ideas seriously, which requires an effort to understand those concerns, beliefs, and ideas on their own terms and not only for the sake of dismissing or refuting them, and never for the sake of demeaning them.

Let us enter 2017 with optimism, a willingness to cooperate with one another, and to disagree in good faith when necessary, and a commitment to reduce our deficit of trust.