Will the wave of decivilization sweep away good manners forever? Frédéric Rouvillois, professor of public law and author of a History of politeness. From 1789 to the present day (Flammarion, 2006, reissue in 2020), analyzes the changes in courtesy in the age of social networks and generalized individualism.
Le Point: What is the difference between politeness, civility, courtesy?
Frédéric Rouvillois: After thinking a lot about this, I think these terms are almost synonymous. In any case, they correspond to the definition given by Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696): “It seems to me that the spirit of politeness is a certain attention to make that, by our words and our manners, the others be happy with us and with themselves. Basically, it is a matter of showing everyone the respect to which they are entitled in all circumstances. Of course, not everyone is entitled to the same consideration: one does not behave with an old gentleman as with a young girl. The purpose is to establish a general climate of good understanding in order to prevent conflicts between people as much as possible, and what they can lead to: verbal and physical violence, which leads to the explosion of Company. Politeness is the oil that gets into the cogs of the social machine. Without it, these cogs risk seizing up. The risk is the zombification of society, which becomes an assembly of zombies content to satisfy their desire. Each of these words also refers to the city. Politeness refers to the Greek polis (“city”), civility, to the Latin civitas (“city”), courtesy, to the court.
Is politeness only to prevent conflict?
It also stems from the desire to enchant existence, to make things more beautiful than they are. This is the idea expressed by the poet, fabulist and novelist Antoine Furetière (1619-1688): “Politeness embellishes everything it touches. “To annoy a person who behaves in a very polite way towards you, you really have to be a very bad sleeper… Politeness also has a playful character. Kissing a woman’s hand today has a funny side.
Would you say this is an anthropological constant?
Politeness has always existed. It seems linked to the nature of man as a social animal. Like law or language, it is one of the ineradicable fundamentals of the human condition.
The situation is paradoxical. We are increasingly aware of its necessity. People aren’t just being polite, they’re questioning this notion. The more difficult life is, the more politeness, as a free gift to give or to receive, is valued, especially by those who do not have much. When you live in a low-income housing estate and you take public transport at 6 a.m. to go to work, you’re happy that people are nice and polite to you. At the same time, there is a consensus that civility is increasingly violated by certain people or in certain places.
Where does this decline occur?
At all levels. In public transport, campaigns promoting “good manners” follow one another year after year. Without success: the number of incivilities is staggering. Rudeness, which consists in making your selfishness prevail over all other considerations, finds new fields of application: listening to your music so loudly on public transport that everyone has to suffer it, for example.
In other words, everyone talks about politeness, but no one practices it?
Our world is marked by total visibility. Chronic, even acute, incivility is not necessarily greater than that of the 1950s, for example, but it is more visible and more painfully felt.
Is this a generational issue?
Absolutely not. The idea that old people are more polite than young people is preposterous. Some old people are just as rude or even more rude than some young people!
Are not the relations between men and women today policed?
In some respects there has been an improvement. We will be less likely to whistle at a pretty girl in the street… but that’s because the law has taken over. Reports are smoother, but it’s not about politeness. If we are forced to heavily sanction these behaviors, it is because we no longer trust the civility of individuals. Penalization is both a consequence and a symptom of the decivilization, or enslavement, with which we are confronted.
Some women are happy that gallant behavior remains, provided it is not too heavy – but if it is too heavy, it is no longer a question of gallantry… Others see it as an outrageous attack on equality of the sexes, and therefore to their dignity as women. Formerly, a gallant behavior aroused, on the part of the one who received it, if not a smile, at least a feeling of satisfaction. Now, we don’t know if we will be rewarded with a smile or a slap: in uncertainty, it is better to abstain.
For Emmanuel Macron, the veil “does not conform to the civility that there is in our country”. Do you share this finding?
This statement puzzles me. That the veil could pose a problem of equality is one thing. But I don’t see the connection with civility…
Our current means of communication, SMS, e-mails, social networks, do they not encourage us to new refinements of civility? It’s hard to know whether to end an email with “Best regards” or with “Best regards”…
This can be said of every major technological advance. Each progress brings innovations on the side of politeness as that of incivility. I am thinking, for example, of the automobile. You can use the Internet to ruin and ugly the lives of others, but you can also be polite. What amuses me is keeping the same wordings as for a handwritten letter. I don’t start a message with “Hello”, but with “Dear Sir”; I conclude with “Please accept the expression of my best feelings”…
Politeness requires giving free time to someone else. Salutations are often long: what matters is precisely the time spent writing them. Same logic when you hold the door for someone to let them through. There have already been phases of decivilization, but ours is singular and more serious insofar as we live in the world of immediacy, of instantaneity. As a teacher, I receive hundreds of emails from students complaining that they don’t receive their continuous assessment notes quickly enough. It was unimaginable a few years ago. Because of this general impatience, we no longer take the time for others. As you go faster and faster, you inevitably become more and more selfish. Our mantra is “I don’t have time”. The current decivilization is based on this selfishness, which can take benign forms but also lead to violence.
Remember that it is not specific to our time. At other times in history, people have become rude, crude, violent again. For example at the end of the thirty years of the wars of religion (1562-1598). At that point, the previous conventions of politeness are well forgotten. And a century later, the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715) is considered one of the peaks of French politeness.