Skip to content
You are not logged in |Login  
     
Limit search to available items
Book Cover
book
BookBook
Author Bejan, Teresa M., 1984- author.

Title Mere civility : disagreement and the limits of toleration / Teresa M. Bejan.

Publication Info. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017.

Copies

Location Call No. Status
 Bloomfield, Prosser Library - Adult Department  323.443 BEJ    Storage
Description x, 272 pages ; 25 cm
Note Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.--Yale University, 2013).
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-263) and index.
Summary Civility is often treated as an essential virtue in liberal democracies that promise to protect diversity as well as active disagreement in the public sphere. Yet the fear that our tolerant society faces a crisis of incivility is gaining ground. Politicians and public intellectuals call for "more civility" as the solution--but is civility really a virtue? Or is it something more sinister--a covert demand for conformity that silences dissent? Mere Civility sheds light on this tension in contemporary political theory and practice by examining similar appeals to civility in early modern debates about religious toleration. In seventeenth-century England, figures as different as Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke could agree that some restraint on the wars of words and "persecution of the tongue" between sectarians would be required; and yet, they recognized that the prosecution of incivility was often difficult to distinguish from persecution.-- Provided by publisher
Contents Introduction: Wars of words -- "Persecution of the tongue": Toleration and the rise of religious insult -- "Silver alarums": Roger Williams's "mere" civility -- "If it be without contention": Hobbes and civil silence -- "A bond of mutual charity": Locke and the quest for concord -- Conclusion: The virtue of mere civility -- Epilogue: Free speech fundamentalism.
Subject Courtesy -- Political aspects.
Toleration -- Political aspects.
Discussion -- Political aspects.
Freedom of speech.
Forums (Discussion and debate) -- History.
Related To Based on (work): Bejan, Teresa Mia. Mere civility. New Haven, Connecticut : Yale University, 2013 (OCoLC)911075800
ISBN 9780674545496
0674545494
Standard No. 40026704488
-->
Add a Review