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Ethico-power and the City

In: Ethics and Empowerment

Author

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  • Keith Pheby

Abstract

Why in the West, is politeness regarded with suspicion? Why does courtesy pass for a distance or a hypocrisy? Why is an ‘informal’ relation more desirable than a coded one? Occidental politeness is based on a certain mythology of the ‘person’. Topologically, Western man is reputed to be double, composed of a social, factitious, false ‘outside’ and of a personal, authentic ‘inside’. According to this schema, the human ‘person’ is that site filled by nature, girdled, closed by a social envelop which is anything but highly regarded: the polite gesture is a sign of respect exchanged from one plenitude to the other, across the worldly limit. However, as soon as the ‘inside’ of the person is judged respectable, it is logical to recognize this person more suitably by denying all interest in his worldly envelope: hence it is the supposedly frank, brutal, naked relation, stripped of all signalectics, indifferent to any intermediary code, which will best respect the other’s individual value: to be impolite is to be true — so speaks our Western morality…

Suggested Citation

  • Keith Pheby, 1999. "Ethico-power and the City," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: John J. Quinn & Peter W. F. Davies (ed.), Ethics and Empowerment, chapter 5, pages 147-169, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-37272-6_6
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230372726_6
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