The Epistemic Value of Politeness as a Virtue

Abstract

The chapter addresses politeness as a virtue and the underlying emotions which give rise to politeness on an intersubjective level. It explores the dynamic function of moral emotions which specifically contribute to politeness and delves into the issues of self-worth, self-love and a sense of power which all facilitate a stable emotional, dynamic structure behind politeness as a virtue. One of the key tenets of the chapter is that moral emotions play an important cognitive role in allowing us to recognise what is right and what is wrong, what is socially desirable and what is socially proscribed. A further step in the argument in the chapter is that the perception of norms and values is fundamentally aesthetic, and that politeness as an aesthetic value belongs to just such a realm of socialisation which, by using aesthetic discriminations, leads to the adoption of norms and practices which define decency, propriety, even solidarity and loyalty as moral values. Thus our perception of decency and its place as a value in the socialisation process can trace the more general and more comprehensive processes of value-laden cognitions that are recognised by society as formative of that society’s paradigms of good citizenship. The chapter specifically singles out the role of politeness as useful in the process of adopting aesthetic judgements on an emotional value: the process which moves from rationally choosing politeness as an argumentatively defensible strategy in social relationships to emotionally embracing politeness as a specific aesthetic sensibility. This is a process that embodies our socialisation and points out the epistemic role of aesthetic sensibility in the formation of personality and solidification of value system.