I don’t think analytic principles are of any value here, and that any choice is dependent on the person and conditions of this unique event. Perhaps she’s beautiful or perhaps he’s interesting. Perhaps I’m necessarily uncomfortable with the species writ large at the moment, and am not interested at all. At any rate, we face the event at the level of instinct, judging objective factors such as body language and the weather, and trust ourselves thereby.
That’s not really the point. As I said, things can get messy. For example, the unshaven backpacker could easily, in another time and place, be the man in an impeccable business suit. Part of this is the narrative we have of “dining out”. There are places the unshaven back-packer doesn’t get to enter. Like you could easily go to the cinema wearing jeans and t-shirt, while going to the opera like that comes at a social cost. If you go to the opera in jeans and t-shirt it’s likely to be seen as a statement, even if not intended as one. Differences in dress make for a different “definition of the situation” (see William Thomas, if I recall correctly), and mixing dress might create uncertainty, which you would push on the other person. It’s entirely possible that neither party would mind, but that there’s some baseline of, maybe, suspicion.
And again, locale matters. This is least likely to be a problem, I think, in McDonalds, where you expect all sorts to begin with. In some prestigious restaurant there might be a sense of “why did they let him in like that?” And that might not actually be a disapproving question; it might just be born of genuine surprise. But surprise could be taken for disapproval if you signal lower status and are self-conscious about it.
All sorts of things that aren’t in themselves moral can take on moral aspects via a (perceived) breach of manners. Even when both parties are well-meaning, mixing of social-status-signals in one situation can cause awkwardness, if neither party is good at “breaking the ice”. Imagine the backpacker is acting on a dare, if it helps.
Yes, I think so, at least if we are talking about the ethical encounter as the source of morality, as in Levinas. It’s primordial, and the societal complications of role, class, and so on are secondary. So the real harm that happens in your staff canteen example shows the power of the societal excrescences on human social being, but not necessarily its moral legitimacy.
Put like that, it’s too abstract and purist, a fantasy of ethics as a communion between faces floating free in space devoid of air. But I think that would be a misunderstanding of Levinas. The point is that before the games begin, before the stranger or the boss has said anything, the face of the other has placed a demand on you.
On the other hand, there is no space for a non-socially-constituted other to make a moral demand before they are seen as the boss, or whatever. The boss is always already the boss. The other is always mediated. Surely Levinas would agree, but I’m not yet sure how he’d respond. I expect it would be something like: yes, the other is always mediated, but running through all these interactions is the basic ethical demand of the face, whether from the boss or the co-worker or the stranger in the restaurant—such that there is always a possibility in principle of rejecting the game and falling back on ethics, not in terms of a retreat but in terms of a recovery. For example, you respond to the boss with “sorry, but I really need to be alone at the moment,” expressing yourself with gravity and regret. The boss may well accept this and leave you alone, without losing face—thus having played the game non-disastrously—but also having respected a true ethical demand. So I suppose this means there is no clean separation or dichotomy between the ethical and the social, that they are inextricably bound together. So you’re right in that sense—but we can still distinguish them and identify a back-and-forth between the two, in which one can obscure the other.
I was thinking as I went there. No doubt it could be formulated more efficiently, but where’s the fun in that?
I’ve had this happen once. I said something like, “No, I don’t want anyone sitting next to me.” If they were to start talking, I would hold up a hand and say something like, “I need you to go now.” I just consider this the art of clarity.
I’ve not been to Austria. If people use a bag to take up a seat here (Australia) and the train or tram is getting full I will usually ask them to move the bag. If they don’t, I generally pick up the bag and place it in their lap. Or on the floor. I’ve had to do this on occasion.
This is how I’d see your reaction in terms of Austrian manners/morality (but be aware that manners and morality in this case are informal and anyone’s guess as is a good as mine, plus that I intuit that in Tyrol/Vorarlberg/Carinthia things are more in line what you might be used to than in Upper Austria, where I live [I haven’t been to Australia]):
Taking the bag and placing it in someone’s lap is: rude but justified.
Refusing to move the bag is: rude and unjustified.
You come out on top.
Lies are responses to, and attempts to cope with, gaps in between -person understanding, goals, purposes, perspectives. so one must diagnose and deal with the cause, not the response. There are many situations in which I am fairly confident that if I ‘tell the truth’, such gaps in between-person understanding will make it impossible for my intent to be conveyed faithfully. For instance, my ‘telling the truth’ about my need for solitude may be misconstrued by the social butterfly as a rejection. So my suggested alternative was one way in which I can convey my central intent (my having no desire to reject them) in a way that would also convey my need for solitude. I think in this case the ‘white lie’ effectively conveys more of the relevant truth I am trying to get across to the other than some metaphysically pure approach to truth could. If instrumentalization involves not taking the needs and perspective of the other into account, then it is the dogmatic approach to truth rather than the ‘contextually-sensitive’ truth which runs this risk.
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I don’t really think like this. I simply have a need and will do what I can (within reason) to meet that need.
One thing that might be useful knowing when talking to me in the future is that pretty much everything I say has a tinge of irony to it. It’s not that I’m lying. I mean what I say, to the extent that I can mean what I say. In this case, my motivation also comes from the focus on morality of this thread (in particular, I was sensitivised to the topic by Baden’s reply to me respective the business-suit/backpacker situation, which I saw less in moral terms and more in a descriptive what-happens-between-people way).
So, yeah, I don’t really think like this either, but this thread makes me talk like this, and this is the way I would think about it if I did think about it in right-wrong ways to begin with. Not sure if this makes sense. Hence the irony the internet doesn’t convey (I could have used a smily I suppose, but I’m not particualrly emoticon-literate…)
No worries, I like irony. My reading of your response was you were reflecting the framework used.
Ah fine. That’s pretty much it, isn’t it?
This hits home. Maybe it’s the base moral stance that we are conditioned out of when politeness substitutes for cultural understanding. Politeness is a formula that short-circuits the idea that there is something to know beyond the smooth inter-functionality that makes everything work. But as you point out, if we use the lack of information about the stranger positively (there is something to know) rather than negatively (I don’t know) then instead of falling back on politeness to neutralize knowing further, we enable its potential.
The problem here, I think, is that we are conditioned out of our instincts such that they are often too slow to come up with something satisfactory and so we can be left flailing in polite formulations.
I think that’s close to how I see it. There’s a mediation but we ought not give it primacy or stop there or use it as a reason to deny there’s something we’re missing in our day to day interactions. The face floating freely is the limit case (analagous to Bartleby) that teaches us something.
I understand you better now as being descriptive rather than normative. It’s rather close to what I was saying about the “boss” at the staff canteen. Maybe the boss gets treated somehow differently and maybe there are reasons for that we can outline without tying ourselves into justfying the disparity as necessary.
I remember being involved in two such instances: one, in a canteen, when I just got up and walked away; and another, on a train, when I put my hand up to say I wasn’t going to engage. Clear, for sure, but they’ve stuck with me because I am still somewhat uncomfortable with my behaviour.
I think these days “politeness” carries a whiff of inauthenticity about it, that it connotes being strategic or performative. You might be polite to a work colleague you have long-running personal conflicts with, for example.
I want to say that manners is closer to morality than performative politeness, that it does encode a default recognition of the other’s worth. The difference between morality and manners might be in what we’ve been talking about—how much you know—or might be in the stakes—mostly people associate manners with low-stakes situations, like, you know, seating at restaurants.
One of my guiding principles, which seems to cross both domains, is Postel’s Law, “Be conservative in what you send, and liberal in what you receive.” I can hardly imagine asking to share a stranger’s table without really good reason, but I can hardly imagine refusing someone who asks to share mine.
I guess most people would say that your demonstrated need outweighs my mere preference, but my mere preference outweighs your demonstrated mere preference. This is how Postel and the presumption of ignorance push me toward being more obliging, though: first, I presume I don’t really know much about what’s going on with you, and I try not to give too much weight to what I might infer (so I am apalled at the aggressive and dangerous driving of others but habitually tell myself they might have a family emergency, because I’ve driven pretty dangerously in such situations); second, given that I would behave using Postel, I would have a good reason for imposing on a stranger, so I nudge myself a bit toward presuming they have good reason for imposing on me.
There’s a sort of moral stance there, but grounded in ignorance it’s also something like manners.
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I think we should try to understand what the person is doing, and as you mention above, this will relate to the intention present in particular situations.
There are different prima facie options for the act wherein one asks, “Do you mind if I sit here”? Here are two that come to mind:
- A request or petition
- The social decorum that precedes doing what one is entitled to do
In your OP you speak of a (polite) request, but then you go on effectively to wonder whether what is at stake is a request after all.
I would say that, with respect to your OP, the essential difference between (1) and (2) is that with (1) the social force is placed on the petitioner, whereas with (2) the social force is placed on you. The one on whom the “social force” is imposed is “swimming upstream,” so to speak. When thinking about (1) along with your claim that you are “under the social eye,” we should recognize that if someone is legitimately petitioning you then they will do their best to make their petition private and discreet. If they fail to do this then what is at stake is not really a petition.
The trick is that we often do not know whether we are being confronted with (1) or (2) (or else some strange amalgamation of the two). Part of the ensuing dialogue will often involve sussing out what we are being confronted with.
In many cultures (2) is going to be the more common situation (and yet we must remember that it is only common given the circumstance you laid out, for it is the circumstance which determines what one is entitled to). I would say that it comes across as “funny” because an imposition is being couched in polite terms. At bottom, though, I think it is the same issue that arises with school children who are averse to sharing. If a resource is designated as a shared resource, then others are entitled to its use. Nevertheless, if the resource is diminished in being divided then those who are currently using it will naturally be averse to sharing it.
More concisely, there is something of a zero-sum game built into this scenario, and therefore social friction is not altogether avoidable. In our day and age it seems crucial to simply accept the existence of a certain level of social friction instead of becoming bogged down in talk of “micro aggressions.” One or both of you may end up feeling bad or at least imperfect after the exchange has concluded, and that’s okay. You desired mutually exclusive ends and therefore what inevitably ensued was a kind of compromise or sub-optimal outcome. It is possible to compass and come to terms with the likelihood of such situations—to grow “thicker skin” while simultaneously recognizing others’ right to thicker skin as well, whether in acceding or refusing.
(I find this thread interesting because it captures the conundrum of Liberalism in a very felicitous and tangible encounter.)
Edit: I should add that these sorts of negotiations have much more to do with body language and subconscious cues than the words we explicitly formulate. That’s part of the reason why it is so hard to talk about them while abstracting from bodily experience.
You make a neat distinction and it is a useful analysis that helps untangle what is going on. Although, I think we can revisit @Dawnstorm’s posts here in emphasising that the participants’ perceived relative social standing is part of what determines what we are entitled to do as opposed to what we must petition for.
In some cases, that may be clear and in othere contested. In Thailand, a monk is entitled to certain seats on the train and merely needs be present to effect that right. Others, if they have a particular need, may use that need to leverage a similar result, but the friction you spoke of is more likely.
Anyhow, this is the part I most want to develop.
I think it points not just to a conundrum of liberalism but something broader, i.e. a conundrum inherent in the understanding of what a culture really is. I would claim that the extent to which there is a need for reactive formulas of politeness divorced from a separately perceived moral engagement is the extent to which a culture is already dead. At the very least as a unified force.
Politeness, as I see it, is the means by which the social world negotiates between egoism and morality. And it needs to do this because the macro-social (a given society or “culture”) is no longer the sole arbiter of right and wrong - its moral force is squeezed between individual interest and a theoretically universalizable ethics (the meta-social).
Traditional cultures didn’t have that problem. Morality and obligation collapsed into doing what was consonant with them. There was one tune to sing and to be out of tune was to be in the wrong.
Now, we’re all expected to be the conductors of a kind of moral orchestra. We have a duty to ourselves as sovereign individual; we have a duty to our particular society (social mores and laws); and we have a duty to a universalizable ethics (though we may see that in different terms); and all of that, in any given situation, we are obliged to bring into concert.
Hence, the social games we play and our nagging dissatisfaction with them. We live in nominal cultures, not ‘real’ ones.
In such cases, I usually respond with: “What if I refuse you?” or “What if I object?” This way, it gives the ball back to the applicant, forces him to reflect, and does not exclude the development of a dialogue.
Yes, I agree.
It seems to me that, according to a central premise of liberalism, there should be no unified, binding culture. I think we could say the same about any strongly individualistic ethos, but liberalism goes a long way towards formalizing an attitude that is opposed to unified, binding cultures.
(Granted, I am somewhat unclear on how you are envisioning “formulas of politeness” in relation to “separately perceived moral engagement.” It seems to me that liberal societies have odd and somewhat incoherent ideas about how the moral sphere is circumscribed, and maybe this is a sign of agreement between us.)
These are quite interesting ideas, and they could be developed at length.
I sort of agree that traditional cultures did not have a three-tier understanding of individual interest, societal interest, and universal morality (although monotheistic cultures complicate the picture and generate a distinction between what is owed to society or local gods, and what is owed to the One God or the supreme power). I suppose I would argue that all societies must coordinate individual interest and social pressures, and that every society will involve competing social pressures. So although I don’t think traditional cultures were monochrome and insulated from social factionalism, I do agree that the strong distinction between social mores (i.e. politeness) and universal morality was absent.
Yes, this is a good point.
I guess my general view is that human life takes place on a spectrum ranging from the superficial to the more authentic or earnest. Although social mores are not unimportant, they are relatively superficial. It then follows that an important human skill is to be able to shift between different layers of superficiality or earnestness. If a social more has become corrupt, or if an individual is wielding it in a way that infringes on universal morality, then we should offer them an opportunity to “shift gears,” re-evaluate what they are engaged in, and transition into a more earnest layer of being. But this is a very delicate skill, and the degree of “shift” will vary from one situation or individual to another. Incidentally, growth in self-knowledge follows a similar pattern, where a significant increase in self-knowledge can be detrimental to the individual if it occurs too suddenly or with too much force.
Of course one could also engage in rude behavior in order to repel the unwanted approach, but public and social spaces place a limit on this option. The more reliable option here would be a private group or an explicit subculture where the unwanted behavior is deemed impermissible.
Seen in this light, your rejoinder to the polite seat-taker makes more sense to me. In the right circumstance it could be a way to “downshift” and wittily appeal to their higher nature. I tend to think that the ability to downshift or upshift and carry others along with you is a skill that must be practiced rather than something that could be planned or thoroughly analyzed. A bit like spontaneous humor.
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