Mere civility : disagreement and the limits of toleration Cover Image

Book

Mere civility : disagreement and the limits of toleration / Teresa M. Bejan.

Bejan, Teresa M., 1984- (Author).

Summary:

Civility is often treated as an essential virtue in liberal democracies that promise to protect diversity as well as active disagreement in the public sphere. Yet the fear that our tolerant society faces a crisis of incivility is gaining ground. Politicians and public intellectuals call for "more civility" as the solution--but is civility really a virtue? Or is it something more sinister--a covert demand for conformity that silences dissent? Mere Civility sheds light on this tension in contemporary political theory and practice by examining similar appeals to civility in early modern debates about religious toleration. In seventeenth-century England, figures as different as Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke could agree that some restraint on the wars of words and "persecution of the tongue" between sectarians would be required; and yet, they recognized that the prosecution of incivility was often difficult to distinguish from persecution.-- Provided by publisher.

Record details

ISBN: 9780674241640 (pbk.)
ISBN: 0674241649 (pbk.)
Physical Description: x, 272 pages ; 24 cm
Edition: First Harvard University Press paperback edition.
Publisher: Cambridge, MA ; Harvard University Press, 2019.

Content descriptions

General Note:	Reprint. Originally published: President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2017. Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.--Yale University, 2013).
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-263) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Introduction: Wars of words -- "Persecution of the tongue" -- "Silver alarums": Roger Williams's "meer" civility -- "If it be without contention": Hobbes and civil silence -- "A bond of mutual charity": Locke and the quest for concord -- Conclusion: The virtue of mere civility -- Epilogue: Free speech fundamentalism.