First posting of the new academic year! I hope some people find this
somehow worth reading.
The following is, more or less, the content of a short talk
that I gave to the entering class of the South Carolina Honors
College, at their 2006 ‘convocation’. I had intended to supplement
the text with a few links to sites on the web, but the information to
which I refer here is very easily available via a quick search on
Google.com or similar search engines, and I’m short on time… Chris Tollefsen and Justin Weinberg made some useful comments on earlier drafts.
I have good news and bad news. I’ve been asked to give a speech
of the ‘If I only knew then what I know now’ genre. That’s the
bad news. Well, the good news is that I’m not going to give that
speech. But there’s more bad news as well: Instead, I’m going
to take a few minutes to talk about manners. Sounds like a dull
topic, and irrelevant to the academic life? It isn’t.
Let’s take the handshake. Why do people shake hands? Cultural
historians seem to think that it was a sign of peaceful intent, that is,
a sign that you aren’t about to pull your sword out of its scabbard and
skewer the shakee. So you see, hand-shaking is just good academic
sense — wouldn’t it suck for you if you forgot to shake your professor’s
hand, and the next thing you know there’s a sword poking through
your belly? (And watch out for those left-handed professors!)
Now, the forms that manners take are culturally relative, and their
practical origins are often obscured in history — I almost never bring
a sword into the classroom anymore. But their practical origins remind
us that manners served — and continue to serve — an important purpose. Good manners aren’t just relics of ancient history. They serve the purpose of civility.
They are, in fact, one of the cornerstones of a civil society.
The word ‘civil’ is from the Latin ‘civis’, city. And as it is now, so also
in Roman times, the city was an odd place, for you are likely to meet
perfect strangers even in your own city, people whose well-being has no
obvious impact on your own, people who, in fact, consume the very
resources — food, land, boyfriends, girlfriends — that you would dearly
like to have for yourself, and yet you are expected not to kill them, or
even to take their boyfriends, and you can often rely on them to do you
the same favor.
Why are cities like that? Well, philosophers and political scientists from
Aristotle to Thomas Hobbes to John Rawls have fretted quite a bit over
that question, and they have different answers, but they all agree on this
one fundamental truth: cities — that is, civil societies — are better for
the citizens than the alternative. We benefit from the non-violent presence
of others. We benefit by respecting them, by respecting their rights as
citizens, despite the fact that respecting them means that we cannot raid
their refrigerators without permission. Hobbes went so far as to say that,
outside of civil society, life would be ’solitary poor, nasty, brutish, and short’.
Doesn’t sound like fun.
The Honors College is also a civil society. Its citizens — you and I — are
obligated to respect one another. ‘Obligated’ not because some University
President, or Dean, or Professor, says we have to — they can’t make us do it.
We are obligated because it is the right thing to do; it also happens to be in
our best interest.
Now, I’m not talking about paying your share of the electric bill, or not ‘borrowing’
your roommate’s shampoo — you’ll have to work those things out on your own.
I’m talking about something more important, and more real, than
electric bills and shampoo: I’m talking about ideas, and reason.
And what exactly is the benefit of respecting the ideas and reason of others?
What is the benefit of living in a civil academic society? Well, the very
possibility of exercising your own reason, and the very possibility of
testing your own ideas, demand it. The figure of the lonely genius is a
myth — despite what you might have read, not even Einstein was a lonely
genius (although a genius he was). Ideas are developed in a context of other
ideas; ideas are developed by allowing themselves to be challenged; reason
demands that opposing views be considered thoughtfully, not dismissed
out of hand. Respect for the reason of others also demands that you in
turn challenge their ideas, thoughtfully and carefully. And because you
live in this academic society, you have the right to expect the same from us.
Alas, our larger society seems to teach otherwise. Recently, at Ohio State
University, it was revealed that dozens of engineering dissertations were
largely plagiarized from earlier dissertations. The University is
seeking to rescind the students’ degrees, but many have come to the
defense of the students, arguing as the former students themselves have,
that they didn’t know better. But knowledge has nothing to do with it.
It is a question of respect, of respect for the ideas of others.
It is ‘good manners’ to cite others when you use their ideas, just as it is
good manners to ask before you raid the refrigerator. In
both cases, there is reason for the manner.
Outside of academia, things are perhaps worse. I was recently sent
several transcripts from interviews by a
television host named ‘Bill O’Reilly’, who, I gather is rather popular.
(Please forgive my utter ignorance about television. I have one, but
it isn’t plugged in.) Well, if you’re familiar with this guy, then you’ll
know that whatever he does, it isn’t an interview.
In one of the interviews I read, he told the guest to ’shut up’ at least
four times, eventually cutting off the guest’s
microphone, apparently, as far as I can tell, for no other reason than
that the guest was attempting to express
a view contrary to O’Reilly’s.
Did those engineering students improve or benefit intellectually by
copying a dissertation from someone else? Probably not. Does Bill
O’Reilly learn anything from his so-called guests? Probably not.
Does his audience? Probably not.
The result of this sort of machine-gun-fire rhetorical trickery is,
inevitably, to spawn either silence or the
same in return; just check out the web site orielly-sucks.com. How
many of us would like our intellectual legacy to
be the existence of web site devoted to why we suck?
My point is not that O’Reilly’s views are right or wrong. I don’t
really know what his views are anyway, and I could
easily have picked on somebody else. My point is that in a civil
academic society, manners matter, and they matter for a reason —
they matter for the sake of reason.
Enjoy your new intellectual city. It’s a great place to live an
intellectual life. Be well-mannered. Be civil. Tell us — respectfully —
what you think, whether you agree or disagree, or aren’t sure,
or just have a question. We’ll do the same for you.