Abstract

Practices like shaking hands, waiting one's turn in line, and eating with the proper utensils may strike many philosophers as relatively trivial--just part of the normal ebb and flow of everyday life. It is the burden of my dissertation to show that, in fact, these practices are worth paying attention to. They are part of politeness or etiquette, and, I argue, there are moral reasons to be polite. ;My claims about reasons to be polite are founded upon a certain conception of etiquette that I develop in my dissertation. I begin by distinguishing between two kinds of politeness: politeness which involves having ends such as putting people at ease and politeness as rule-following . The moral importance of civility is unproblematic and well-established; my argument concerns the moral value of etiquette. I develop a detailed account of etiquette which has certain distinctive features that I use to ground the moral arguments for good manners. ;After rejecting two arguments commonly given for the morality of etiquette, I offer two arguments of my own: Given certain weak assumptions, manners are necessary for effective social cooperation. Good manners express a commitment to cooperation--which, I argue, is a end which, morally speaking, we ought to try to achieve. Politeness, however, does more than express a cooperative spirit; under the relevant conditions, it also constitutes showing respect for persons. That is, treating people politely fulfills a certain basic moral obligation to treat them with the respect owed to fellow members of the community