The Ethics of Incivility

How should we respond to everyday rudeness? Is it ever OK - even desirable - to be rude to others? In earlier work (Edyvane 2020), I elaborated a distinction between two different styles of rudeness (conceptualised as 'uncivility'), incivility and anti-sociality, and I argued that incivility might have value as a form of democratic dissent, especially when practiced by marginalised members of society unfairly deprived of access to formal channels of procedural justice. But that account left open the question of whether and when incivility could be deemed permissible. In this paper, I take up that question as a contribution to reflection on the 'ethics of incivility'. Having established the conceptual framework I mean to work within, I first explain why the incivility/anti-sociality distinction, whilst normatively pertinent, undetermines the permissibility or otherwise of incivility. I then proceed to explore and criticise two accounts of permissible incivility. The first account identifies permissible incivility with that which is directed to a political purpose. The second account identifies permissible incivility with that practiced by those excluded from the fruits of social cooperation. While there is merit in both of these accounts, I argue that neither is fully satisfying. The paper concludes with a reflection on the first-person predicament of the citizen and the limits of political theory in ameliorating that predicament.