You don’t have to be nice to political opponents. But you do have to talk to them.
By Teresa Bejan
March 8
Teresa Bejan is a professor of politics at the University of Oxford and the author of "Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration."
As American politics comes to resemble the self-righteous sectarianism of the Reformation more and more every day, the temptation on all sides to give up on civility is understandable: Calls for civility can serve as swords as well as shields, and they are often abused to put an end to disagreement rather than enable it. Nevertheless, rejecting the idea of civility altogether would be a serious mistake, because abandoning our co-citizens in favor of the more agreeable company of the like-minded is what got us into this mess in the first place. If we are to break the self-perpetuating cycle of epistemic closure, complacency and self-congratulation, we must embrace Williams’s mere civility as a commitment to using our words with, as well as against, our opponents. To live together, we must be able to talk to one another; the fate our own tolerant society hangs in the balance.
