Critical Civility in Democratic Conflict: Hannah Arendt, John Dewey, and the Institutional Politics of Respect

My paper reconstructs civility as a contested democratic virtue by placing Hannah Arendt and John Dewey in dialogue with the panel’s definition of civility as civic respect and as a moral obligation to recognize others as equal co-authors of shared norms. My argument goes that civility is neither an unqualified good nor a dispensable etiquette, but a political practice whose democratic value depends on how it structures conflict and power, concluding that a concept of critical civility best captures the ambivalent normative demands of plural public life, comprising of three different criteria which I take from Arendt and Dewey. An Arendtian perspective frames civility as a practice that can safeguard the public realm as a space of appearance in which plural actors speak and act as equals. Yet Arendt also alerts us to the danger that norms of “proper” conduct can collapse politics into social conformity and mute the disclosure of injustice. This perspective therefore implies that civility addresses societal conflict only when it preserves plural contestation instead of enforcing depoliticizing harmony. Complementing this view, a reading following John Dewey interprets civility as a set of democratic habits that sustain communication, inquiry, and cooperative problem-solving under conditions of disagreement. However, Dewey’s emphasis on habituation also clarifies that civility can reproduce inequity when dominant groups define “respectability” in ways that restrict marginalized voices. Because of this, such an understanding highlights that civility addresses societal conflict only when it is linked to inclusive conditions for shared inquiry. This way, both thinkers provide valuable resources for specifying exactly when incivility is ethically justified, as incivility can be warranted when inherited norms of respect function as mechanisms of silencing, when disruption is required to reveal the stakes of injustice, or when public action aims to expand equality of voice rather than to deny it. In this context, institutions play a decisive role in shaping civility norms and their political effects. Regarding this matter, Arendt’s concerns suggest institutional responsibilities to secure rights of participation and protect spaces of nonviolent public action, while Dewey’s account emphasizes education and the design of participatory infrastructures that cultivate communicative habits. Following from this, my argument concludes that civility is an institutional as well as interpersonal obligation, suggesting three normative principles of “Critical Civility” in my finished paper with which to normatively evaluate contemporary polities under the aspect of how (well) the need for civility and the necessity of defiance, such as by measures of civil disobedience, are balanced, these three being: 1) Principle of equal standing and reciprocal recognition, 2) Principle of public, nonviolent, and justice-directed disruption, 3) Principle of institutional responsiveness and democratic learning. In sum, my argument contributes a normative framework that clarifies the tension between respectful and oppressive forms of civility and identifies conditions under which civility and principled disruption can jointly sustain democratic life and it concludes that critical civility should be treated as a central virtue for democracies facing deep social conflict.