Abstract
During the Enlightenment a wide variety of views about both the value and disvalue of politeness were defended. At one end of the spectrum were authors such as Shaftesbury and Addison, who uniformly praised politeness for its positive contributions to communication and cultural progress. At the other end were theorists such as Rousseau and Montesquieu, both of whom were deeply critical of politeness. In this essay I focus on Kant’s views about politeness, examining and evaluating his arguments both for and against it. Although Kant’s position on politeness lies somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of Enlightenment views about progress, ultimately he sees more value than disvalue in it. There is something in politeness that “inspires love.”
Keywords
- Kant
- Politeness
- Duties of virtue
- Shaftesbury
- Addison
- Rousseau
- Montesquieu
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- 1.
Quotations from Kant’s works are cited in the body of the text by volume and page number in Kant 1900–. When available, I use—with occasional modifications—the English translations in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (Kant 1992–2016). Otherwise, translations are my own. Abbreviations used: Anth = Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, MS, Metaphysik der Sitten, RGV = Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, V-Anth/Mensch = Menschenkunde, V-Anth/Mron = Mrongovius, V-Mo/Collins = Moralphilosophie Collins, WA = Beantwort der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?
- 2.
I would like to thank Patrick Frierson and Steven Crowell for their advice and suggestions on this chapter.
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Louden, R.B. (2021). ‘An Illusion of Affability that Inspires Love’: Kant on the Value and Disvalue of Politeness. In: Xie, C. (eds) The Philosophy of (Im)politeness. Advances in (Im)politeness Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81592-9_12
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