How cities speak
“There is an unfortunate tendency to assume that civil discourse has occurred whenever two or more people are nice to each other, say something, and don’t get into an argument. That is misleading on all three counts.
Civil discourse is city speech, implying, as Richard Luecke has suggested many times, that it is not only how we speak in cities but also how cities speak.
City speech is not simply or uniformly nice; on the contrary, it is often confrontational and rough. A place in which speech was simply and uniformly nice would be homogeneous and have nothing but smooth edges. I am aware that this may well be what Aristotle had in mind when he described the city in terms of friendship and excluded those who were not ‘beautiful’ (not to mention those who did not speak Greek) from full participation. But, as Martha Nussbaum has pointed out, Aristotle truncated his own city at this point and (unfortunately) did not allow himself to be carried away by his method. That method is certainly capable of carrying us to a city with a more inclusive aesthetic. Beauty is defined not by excluding those who do not fit within existing boundaries but by crossing boundaries to acknowledge the fittingness of diversity encountered in the city. Crossing boundaries involves confrontation and is rarely smooth. But that it is part of city speech means that civil discourse has not occurred if boundaries have not been crossed.
Nor is city speech simply a matter of saying something. If it does not also ensure space and time in which to say nothing, the listening essential to discourse becomes impossible. In terms of boundary crossing, this means that civil discourse has not occurred if boundaries that define spaces of sound and spaces of silence have not been recognized and honored. Both sound and silence are crucial if the city is not simply to degenerate into a place of violence.
Finally, and most emphatically, city speech does not avoid argument. In fact, the rhythm of crossing, recognizing, and honoring boundaries is descriptive of the discipline of argument. (Remember the formulation at the beginning of this essay: liberal arts are concerned with discovery, appreciation, orientation, and application - redefined here in terms of crossing, recognizing, and honoring boundaries.) Where there is no argument, there is no civil discourse, and there is no city. Such a place is likely to be defined in one of three ways: either it is surrounded by an essentially impermeable boundary that excludes difference; or it is marked by violent struggle for control of turf; or (most likely) it is a mixture of both, with enforced homogeneity near the center of power and violent struggle for control of turf on the fringes.”
– Steven Schroeder, A Laboratory for Civil Discourse (via)