A post by Yujia Song

I’m always fascinated by what happens at intersections of neighborhood streets. One Sunday morning when I went running, I approached an intersection with four-way stop signs. I slowed to a stop as I saw a car coming down the other street. I had the right of way, but I wasn’t in a rush, so I smiled at the driver and waved for her to cross first. The driver nodded and smiled back, and extended her hand to tell me to go ahead. So I crossed – quickly – and waved back again to say “thank you.”

Encounters like this fascinate me not just because they give me a warm, fuzzy feeling, but also because all the motioning at each other was entirely useless for practical purposes and even counter-productive (since it would have been much more efficient for us to simply cross the street in the order prescribed by the traffic rules).

Now if you’re thinking, but it’s not useless, then great, but we have some explaining to do. If the driver and I did get something done while not crossing (even when it was legal and safe to do so), what was it that we did? And how did it happen when we neither moved much nor said anything? Finally, to the extent that whatever happened during that time was extraneous — indeed, counterproductive — to our practical purposes of going somewhere, why did we do it? Was it just a waste of time? These are questions I want to explore in this post.

The motions we made are gestures in both its primary and secondary senses of the term: (a) a bodily movement expressive of thought or feeling; (b) something said or done as an expression, “as a symbol or token” (as Merriam-Webster puts it). It is interesting to note the differences in dictionary definitions regarding a gesture’s usefulness: “usually with the purpose of eliciting a favourable response from another” as in the OED, “often something that you know will not have much effect” according to Collins, with Merriam-Webster somewhere in the middle, defining gesture as “something said or done by way of formality or courtesy, as a symbol or token, or for its effect on the attitudes of others.” I will return to the useless/useful issue later, but for now, at least we can recognize gestures as belonging to a different category of actions, for they can be valued simply for the fact that they are done, not necessarily as a means to some other end.

A number of philosophers have argued for the moral value of etiquette or civility (e.g., Buss 1999; Calhoun 2000; Saito 2016; Sherman 2005, Stohr 2012). The consensus among them is that it is important to express moral attitudes (concern, respect, etc.) not only by way of “doing the right thing,” but also in the manner in which we act, such as facial expression and bodily posture. Consequently, following social conventions on etiquette or civility is a vital part of this moral-expressive task. I think the same applies to actions beyond what’s considered good manners, for similarly symbolic gestures (which can range from socially prescribed patterns to more idiosyncratic acts) permeate our everyday interactions with strangers as well as those close to us, e.g., bringing coffee for everyone to an early morning work meeting, buying an impromptu gift for a friend, complimenting neighbors on their Halloween decorations. My neighbor downstairs always brings my mail to my door even though the mailbox is on my way home and she knows it. The “five languages of love” model recommends plenty of gestures to express our love and appreciation for the people we care about the most.

As much as I enjoy the philosophical discussions of etiquette, I still find myself wondering about why how we appear to others (and not just what we do) matters to them and how they are able to decode the messages we intend to convey through gestures (particularly in the second sense). Certainly the existence of a widely shared set of etiquette rules and meaningful expressions is necessary, but that in turn presupposes interesting features of human communication and perception. We can generally read someone’s feelings towards us (intended or unintended) not only in their face, tone of voice, bodily posture or movement, but also in the flowers, gifts, and other gestures. No doubt these are different kinds of perceptual experiences, but insofar as we take imagination to present us that which is not given to our senses here and now, then our perception across all these cases is infused with imagination (even if phenomenologists like to say we “directly perceive” the joy in the smile). They are clear cases where, in Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei’s words, “imagination endows the perception of reality so that it is not merely experienced as informational data, but as meaningful or significant” (2019, 116). Furthermore, the communicative role imagination plays here is not so much conceptual as affective so that it is not a matter of knowing that there is concern in the stranger’s voice or love in the homemade birthday cake, but feeling it. This is why, I think, Sarah Buss considers being polite “the only way possible” to directly express respect for someone (1999, 802). While it’s easy to see that moral expressions from body language to symbolic gestures matter to us because we care about others’ regard for us, this “mattering” is itself made possible by the ways in which imagination impinges on our perception and affective response.

So far we have already seen how gestures are an important means of recognizing value, particularly the value of a person and their relationship to us. Their symbolic nature points to the role imagination plays in revealing what is actual. Furthermore, scholars on ritual emphasize the power of symbolic actions in illuminating what is possible, with the potential to alter the present situation (Seligman et al. 2008; Puett & Gross-Loh 2016; Stalnaker 2016; Olberding 2016). The implication for morality is that gestures to signal our moral attitudes to each other are far from trivial against the background of a world of imperfect moral agents. As Amy Olberding writes, “One of the gains of etiquette practices, then, is their capacity to summon and bring along the morally significant values that inform them, values that, in the mix and muddle of experience, can be difficult to maintain” (2016, 433). This change may occur in the person initiating a polite gesture. Nancy Sherman is hopeful that even if one starts off only acting politely without the appropriate underlying attitude, the external changes may lead to internal transformation over time. I think that even in that moment when I smile and motion to the driver to cross first, enacting the gesture already opens me up to a vision of a better self, even if only momentarily, one that is a little more generous and considerate than I normally care for in my day-to-day preoccupation with getting things done.

Perhaps more crucial is the possibility for change that such gestures open up for all parties to the interaction and not just the initiator. In discussions of the Confucian ideal of li or ritual propriety, Confucius’ insistence on having his mat straight before sitting is often used to illustrate this point: “He wasn't just straightening his mat because he liked things to look neat. He understood that seemingly minor actions such as arranging the place where people would sit with him would create a different environment that could affect them profoundly” (Puett & Gross-Loh 2016, 40). As I see it, this change in atmosphere starts to take shape as the initiator invites others, through the symbolic act, to join her to embrace that possibility, and is completed when the latter accepts the invitation. It is the sort of cases where “faith in a fact can help create the fact,” as William James remarks. Here, the “will to believe” is very much the will to imagine. When I gesture to the driver, perhaps I do believe the stranger is kind and will reciprocate my kindness; or perhaps I’m not so sure, but act as if she would be. Admittedly such attempts do not always succeed (whether addressed to others or to ourselves) – the sort of encounter we imagined may not materialize – but that is the reality of a morally imperfect world. And that is in fact the reason for continued striving for goodness.

In her defense of the moral value of etiquette, Sarah Buss asks us to imagine a world of Kantian agents who never fail to follow the Categorical Imperative (1999, 804). Without etiquette, she argues, these agents would fail to properly acknowledge each other’s dignity. I’m not sure I agree with that claim, but I do believe that “doing the right thing,” even with the right motive, is not sufficient for sustaining a moral community. Bodily or symbolic expressions of moral attitudes serve to enliven our mutual presence in everyday interactions when we are so easily distracted by demands of our own practical interests. This is not to say gestures alone are enough. Just as a world without art, beauty, philosophy, play, or other “useless things” would not be a world we’d like to live in, a world with only those things (or worse, with bad versions of them) is certainly rather unlivable.

References:

Buss, S. (1999). Appearing respectful: The moral significance of manners. Ethics, 109(4), 795-826.

Calhoun, C. (2000). The virtue of civility. Philosophy & public affairs, 29(3), 251-275.

Gosetti-Ferencei, J. A. (2019). The life of imagination: Revealing and making the world. Columbia University Press.

Olberding, A. (2016). Etiquette: A Confucian Contribution to Moral Philosophy, Ethics 2016 126:2, 422-446.

Puett, M., & Gross-Loh, C. (2016). The path: What Chinese philosophers can teach us about the good life. Simon and Schuster.

Sherman, N. (2005). Of manners and morals. British Journal of Educational Studies, 53(3), 272-289.

Saito, Y. (2016). Body Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues. In S. Irvin (Ed.), Body Aesthetics (pp.225-242), OUP.

Seligman, A. B., Weller, R. P., Simon, B., & Puett, M. J. (2008). Ritual and its consequences: An essay on the limits of sincerity. OUP USA.

Stalnaker, A. (2016). In defense of ritual propriety. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 8(1), 117-141.

Stohr, K. (2012). On manners. Routledge.