Aiken & Talisse on Reciprocal Public Virtues

 Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse have an essay in 3 Quarks titled 'Civility as a Reciprocal Virtue'.
This raises the question- is any article titled 'X as Y' bound to be shite?
Let us see-

Constitutional democracy is a system for conducting politics under conditions where citizens, understood as free and equal persons, disagree profoundly about what is good.

Either citizens disagree profoundly about what is good but continue to live together or they start fighting or go their separate ways. The form of Government is irrelevant. The American Civil War happened because people disagreed profoundly about what is good . India was partitioned for the same reason. Romania in the Thirties turned to shit despite having a Constitutional democracy because people disagreed profoundly about what is good. Civility didn't matter a damn. Gandhi and Jinnah and Lincoln and Lee and King Carol and so forth were all terribly civil. It didn't make a blind bit of difference.

Naturally, such disagreements extend to politics itself. That is, we expect democratic citizens to disagree, sometimes even sharply, about the fundamental aims and aspirations of government and its policies. The moral claim underwriting democracy holds that each citizen’s status as a free and equal person is respected when collective political decisions are made by way of a system that affords to each an equal say.

No Constitutional Democracy is based on any such 'moral claim'. Refuting such a claim in a court of law would have no legal effect whatsoever. If I show that my status as a free and equal person was not respected when the Brexit referendum was held- (which, in fact, is true because my conception of the good consists of pretending to be a bunny rabbit)- democracy's 'underwriting' is not affected in any way.

Still, in a democracy, we also expect disagreements over politics to extend beyond Election Day. Even after the votes are counted, citizens are nonetheless entitled to continue arguing over the wisdom, prudence, and even the justice of democratic collective decisions. What’s more, ongoing democratic engagement in the form of continuing scrutiny of political affairs is expected of citizens.

Nonsense! Representative democracy  is about not having to waste one's time doing any such thing. One votes for a guy who will do it for you.

Participation in ongoing political discussion is among the democratic citizen’s duties.

It is a right, not a duty. 

If democracy calls citizens to engage regularly in political discussion, there will be among them ongoing political disagreements. Disagreements over things that matter often get heated, sometimes even hostile. And yet political disagreement in a democracy must be conducted in a way that manifests a fundamental respect for each citizen’s status as a free and equal person. In a democracy, no citizen is inherently another’s boss or subordinate; and all of our political interactions as citizens must reflect that basic moral commitment.

Sheer nonsense! A constitutional democracy may have a Monarch who is inherently 'one's boss' if one is a public servant. The same is true of a Head of State. It is not the case that all citizens necessarily have the same right of audience, petition, or ability to table questions, frame legislation or propose amendments or otherwise debate matters with concerned officials. 

In many constitutional democracies, an unelected chamber, with a hereditary component, exists. Members of Parliament may have immunity from arrest and superior rights of free expression.

What Aikin & Talisse are describing has never existed anywhere and ought not to exist anywhere because it would be a fucking nuisance. 

Given this, there must be rules governing political disagreements and disputes among citizens.

Rubbish! There must be rules governing disagreements and disputes no matter whether they are political or about your porking my girl friend.

As the function of these rules is to preserve respect among free and equal citizens amidst disputes over things that matter, they must take the form of moral requirements.

Moral requirements that require us to treat people as a means to an end- viz. demonstrating a virtue, that of showing respect- rather than an end in themselves, whom you disrespect the hell out of so as to get themselves to stop poisoning themselves with heroin- violate the categorical imperative and thus are wholly immoral. The thing is also utterly stupid. It is only mobsters who keep assuring each other of their undying respect before getting busy with the ice pick or garrotte.

That is to say, political engagements among disagreeing democratic citizens are governed by norms, and when a citizen violates a norm of proper exchange, she not only fails at appropriate engagement, she also renders herself criticizable.

There can't and mustn't be any norms or laws specific to political disagreement, as opposed to any other type, otherwise there will be a temptation to turn a dispute of one sort into another where the penalty for transgression is lighter. Thus if I have an animus against you and can't call you, as Elon Musk just called a brave British cave driver, a 'pedo' for fear of being prosecuted for libel, it is not a good thing if I can get to accuse you of a political crime- like treason- with impunity.

Accordingly, we can say that when a citizen exhibits a stable disposition to abide by the norms of proper engagement, she thereby manifests public virtue.

I have this quality with respect to Nicraguan politics because I neither know nor care anything about it. If paid to attend the Nicraguan Senate, I would certainly abide by the norms referred to but no 'public virtue' would be exhibited thereby. 

The norms of proper political engagement and their corresponding virtues are appealed to on a regular basis throughout our polity.

To no effect whatsoever. 

When the President characterizes those he perceives to be his critics as “very dishonest people”; he thereby appeals to the norm and virtue of honesty.

Nonsense! He is appealing to his voters' hatred and suspicion of the political class to which his critics belongs. 

Charges of bias and partiality uphold the related virtue of evenhandedness.

Quite false. When two prostitutes fight, they call other slags. This does not mean they are upholding the related virtue of chastity.

And so when one criticizes a news organization, be it CNN or Fox News, or any other institution, for being one-sided or for being a mere bullhorn for a singular political perspective, one is backing a norm of this spirit.

 If one were really backing a norm, one's criticism of CNN or Fox would be alethic and balanced and the sort of thing some statutory body or professional association could take cognizance of.

All this said, it is important to distinguish between public virtues that are first-personal and those that are reciprocal.

Why is it important? Will our lives be better if we do it? Will our dicks fall off if we don't?

An analogy with garden-variety moral virtue will be helpful. Consider a virtue like moderation. This virtue establishes a standard of conduct that requires of the individual temperance in the pursuit of enjoyment. This standard is first-personal. What it requires is not contingent on the presence of other temperate people; the virtue of temperance applies to individuals as individuals, and demands of them individual moderation, even in the presence of immoderate company.

How is this a public virtue? It is wholly private. However, if a reciprocal agreement is made, for e.g. if a person with this virtue is hired for a particular task, then and only then is there some public component to it.

Another example of a first-personal virtue is courage. The courageous person must stand firm in fearful situations, even in when surrounded by cowards. To be sure, precisely what course of action courage requires might depend on one’s company and what they are currently doing; nonetheless, that others are cowards does not license anything less than courage from the courageous person. Again, courage, as a first-personal virtue, applies to the individual.

Again, courage is wholly private unless there is some reciprocal relationship or contract predicated upon a consistent display of that virtue in some public context.

Now contrast these first-personal virtues with virtues of a different kind. These virtues do not primarily attach to individuals, but instead govern groups of individuals or are exhibited in relations between them. That is, they establish a standard of conduct for us rather than simply for me and you. Here’s a playground example. We teach our children the policy “keep your hands to yourself”; and in order to refer to those who stably embody this norm, we can fabricate a term for the corresponding virtue. Let’s say that a child who exhibits the stable disposition to keep his hands to himself, thereby exhibits the virtue of being “ungrabby.” But notice that the policy of keeping one’s hands to oneself establishes a standard of conduct for those on the playground; more importantly, it is in virtue of its collective application that individuals are bound to comply with its requirements.

Nonsense! The fact that one child, by reason of mental retardation, is grabby changes nothing. Nongrabbiness is a wholly personal, not public, virtue. The relevant public virtue is not 'ungrabbiness' but 'playing nice'- i.e. observing a whole bunch of rules none of which necessarily involve any particular private or public virtue.

Consequently, when Billy violates the norm by grabbing Danny, and Danny retaliates, it would be absurd to criticize Danny for failing to keep his hands to himself.

What is absurd to think that heteronomous beings- little kids over whom we exercise arbitrary power and whose education in virtue is just beginning- are being mentioned in this context.

With Billy’s violation, the collective norm is suspended, and in extricating himself, Danny does not himself break the rule. Indeed, Danny might nonetheless embody the virtue of being ungrabby; his action against Billy does not show otherwise. To better capture this, notice that the norm “keep your hands to yourself” is an abbreviated version of the more complex norm “keep your hands to yourself on the condition that others are keeping their hands to themselves.”

How fucked up are these two guys? Suppose Billy is developmentally challenged. His grabbiness is not something to be retaliated against. Little kids actually understand this perfectly well. If baby bites them or throws something at them, they don't bite baby or throw something at it. Similarly, they observe unseemly behaviour on the part of a strange child and look to a grown up to soothe or otherwise help the child. If this does not happen, they may try to make up the deficit in their own way. This isn't done by 'tit for tat' but showing the new kid that he doesn't have to grab things. There is a higher pleasure in sharing and playing nice. Of course, it doesn't always work. I continue to grab all the pretzels and monopolise the remote control when babysitting.

We see, then, that the norm and its corresponding virtue are reciprocal; they establish a standard of conduct that applies to groups, and individuals are required to abide by the norm, as long as others generally do so as well.

If a virtue exists, no norm is required. It can't be the case that a norm corresponds to any virtue because norms change with circumstances. Virtues don't.
I suppose there might be someone who says 'doing what Society requires is a virtue'. Such a person would not neceessarily be a Fascist, as opposed to a fool.

Notice that in this playground case, the norm does not indicate what one is permitted to do in response to its violation. Surely there are certain retaliatory acts that Danny could perform against Billy that would be inappropriate or even impermissible. That Billy’s violation suspends the collective norm does not afford to Danny moral carte blanche to response however he wishes. Though his retaliatory response does not itself constitute a violation of the “keep your hands to yourself” norm, Danny may still retaliate in ways that render him worthy of criticism, perhaps even punishment. So Billy’s grabbiness may warrant Danny giving him a good push to get him off, but it doesn’t warrant a crushing blow to the head. That’s clear, but given that there are many other acts between these two poles in extremity, it requires judgment and some context to determine where the line is between the acceptable and unacceptable.

There are no norms here. There are laws. Bashing in someone's head is a crime. If the child is below the age of responsibility, some responsible adult might face criminal charges.

Return now to political engagements among disagreeing democratic citizens. We said above that in order to remain democratic, these engagements must exhibit a fundamental respect for the freedom and equality of all citizens; and in order to exhibit this respect, engagements must be governed by certain norms.

You guys said it but did not abide by the principle it encodes viz. that of showing fundamental respect for the freedom and equality of all citizens- including ones with antagonomic preferences whose freedom would be violated and equality of voice would be disrespected by a stipulation for a priori norms. 

Citizens who manifest the stable disposition to satisfy the relevant norms thereby exhibit public virtue.

I manifest a stable disposition to satisfy norms relevant to public breast feeding. This does not mean I exhibit any public virtue.

Now, clearly, some public virtues are first-personal. As a citizen, one’s engagements with others must manifest the public virtues of honesty and evenhandedness. That one’s fellow citizens are inveterate dissemblers does not license one to be dishonest or biased. In fact, when dishonesty is widespread, honesty and evenhandedness are all the more important.

I am very honest and evenhanded. However the only subject I discuss is the Nicaraguan horcrux of my neighbour's cat. My fellow citizens are inveterate dissemblers, continually pretending to care very greatly about Global Warming and Human Rights and Net Neutrality and so forth. Contra, Aiken & Talisse, I exhibit no public virtue whatsoever- indeed, I am considered a bore and a nuisance- whereas even hypocritical protests of great vicarious mental suffering caused by Human Rights abuses in far away places are considered  to be virtuous or at least to be 'virtue signalling'.

However, other public virtues are reciprocal. They prescribe modes of conduct to us – that is, collectively. Accordingly, individuals are required to exhibit these virtues only when they are embraced and practiced by the group.

It is virtuous to reciprocate only if it would otherwise not be in one's interest to do so. No virtue is involved, in my buying you a drink after you bought me one. It may well be that we are both doing something which violates, or which may lead to a violation of, societal norms and may lead to a public nuisance.

Where the norm corresponding to a reciprocal public virtue is generally violated within a group, the virtue itself is rendered inactive, as it establishes a standard of behavior only under the conditions where the norm is collectively embraced.

Rubbish! I suppose abiding by professional standards in the legal or medical community could be said to involve a 'reciprocal public virtue'. It is not the case that if all other doctors are quacks, that a genuine doctor has to imitate their methods. On the contrary, by recruiting others like herself, such a doctor may in time change the nature of the profession. 

There has been a great deal of commentary of late about the public virtue of civility, much of which stems from recent episodes where prominent people associated with the President were subjected to arguably rude behavior by critics of the current administration. In fact, Breitbart has done those keeping score (on the Right, at least) a favor by keeping a ‘Rap Sheet’ of incivility directed toward conservatives and Trump supporters, and National Review warns that “without civility, we turn toward chaos.” In light of the interest in the question, there is surprisingly little said about what precisely civility requires. We have previously argued that civility is not a matter of being polite and calm. But we need not rehearse that argument here. Our present point is that, whatever the specifics may be about what it requires of us, civility is a reciprocal public virtue. It is rooted in a collective standard of conduct regarding democratic engagements among citizens who disagree. No citizen is required to manifest the virtue of civility within a community that generally disregards it. And this is especially so when those who are wielding the institutional power of the government fail to do so. In our view, democracy in the United States is far past the point where civility can be appealed to as a requirement for citizens’ political engagements; and so we see no sense in which citizens are criticizable for degrees of incivility. However, as in the playground case above, it remains an open question what citizens may do in light of the fact that civility is no longer required.

All this is utter bollocks.  Aiken & Talisse are talking about strategies, not virtues. Strategies change depending on what other people do. Virtues don't. This does not mean that virtue is wholly context independent. As Horace said- Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines. Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum- there is a mean in all things; and, moreover, certain limits on either side of which right cannot be found.