This book-length project will be divided into three major sections, each consisting of two or three chapters. The first section will focus on the transformation of honorable civility. In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke writes that the “philosophical law” consists of “approbation or dislike, praise or blame.” Although he later renamed it the “law of opinion and reputation,” he clearly associated respect or honor with the ancient philosophers such as Cicero who he thought “most busied themselves to enquire after it” (Locke 1975). Like many before him, Locke believed that respect and disrespect was just as effective as any other sanction. In this section I will trace the way in which military glory and religious devotion were transformed into a new honor code, a “law of opinion and reputation,” that shaped the behavior of experimental scientists, religious apologists, and even political actors.

The second section will consider the transmission of honorable civility in the work of Shaftesbury, Addison and Steele, and Jonathan Swift. In his Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Shaftesbury sought to entertain, flatter, and ultimately convert his readers to a type of restrained self-possession. In a series of coffeehouse periodicals, the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, Addison and Steele instruct their readers concerning honorable behavior in the context of religious and political controversy. Through their many fictitious characters, including the celebrated “Mr. Spectator,” they attacked what they saw to be the excesses of their day and promoted a vision of society characterized by polite conversation and restrained sociability. In a series of essays on civility, Jonathan Swift cleverly instructs his readers on the perils of self-deception and the inevitability of conflict.

The final section will focus on the achievement of honorable civility through the work of Mandeville, Rousseau, and Adam Smith. I argue that Smith recognizes and assimilates some of the most important arguments animating contemporary debates over civility. His account of our propensity to persuade others into relationships of mutual sympathy helps to explain the emergence of norms of civility, yet it also shows how these norms generate a range of moral and social dependencies. It is this same propensity to persuade, Smith argues, that helps individuals cultivate the capacity to transcend these dependencies. In this section, I argue that Smith, following Mandeville and Rousseau, recognizes that this culture of politeness can encourage a type of dependency that breeds duplicity and alienation. Yet he ultimately insists that restrained sociability can nonetheless be maintained by individuals who develop the capacity to transform their base desire for approbation into a refined desire for self-approbation. This refined capacity, which Smith calls self-command or independence, paradoxically emerges out of the very persuasive exchange that encourages dependency. Smith’s faith that commercial society can sustain social trust rests ultimately on his belief that an individual can achieve independence from social norms without rejecting them.