The best kind of world literature (another one of the handmaidens of philosophy) teaches how to understand alien human situations, thus educating not only the mind but the spirit. By weaving literature into philosophy we are able to empathetically enter into others’ lives and expand our own horizons.

It is the realm that Martin Buber dubbed the "I-Thou" as distinguished from the realm of the "I-it" with which science is mainly concerned. To my mind, the best philosophy teachers are those who, via literature, are able to bring down to earth abstract universal metaphysical ideas; they are able to return to the particulars from which abstract ideas originally derive.

Politeness of heart is quite different: while the other two presuppose something that is already there, namely basic human dignity (for politeness of manners), and genuine respect for differences of outlook and diversity (politeness of spirit); politeness of the heart brings about what is not there yet. It is the kind of politeness that Ignazio Silone envisions in his novels; what he calls “the conspiracy of hope” of a republic of justice and love yet to come.

Were one to look for a philosopher who best explains this kind of politeness, one could find none better than William James. In his essay The Will to Believe he holds that there are realities in life that can only come about by way of one’s trust-filled expectation. As Robert Kennedy used to say: some people look at things as they are and ask why, others imagine things as they should be and ask why not?

Which is to say, it is trust and faith that helps create a fact; not in a cheap magical mode, but by simply meeting the other halfway, assuming that the other too would wish to ally him/herself with what is best in oneself and the other, as one dares to show trust and expectation. It implies courage and magnanimity; the courage to have "trust in the future" (which etymologically is the same word for faith in Hebrew), the trust that dares to go beyond the evidence of things as they are. To accept things as they are is to eventually become a cynic.

Bergson insisted that only a community where all three levels of politeness exist could claim to be a model of the “ideal republic.” That model exists in all well run philosophy classes or symposia and even publications wherein free speech and genuine dialogue is valued and promoted. On the other hand, where appropriate behaviour has to be mandated and coerced by force and the threat of the law, one ends up not with a polite State but with a police State. In such a State the end Machiavelically justify the means, even when the corrupt means ultimately corrupt the ends.

Drawing some conclusions, it appears that far from being the enemy of truth and love of wisdom (philo-sophia), good manners, as handmaidens to philosophy, can be a great help, perhaps a sine qua non in the search for truth. A symposium or a discussion of issues where irrational pugnacity and wilfulness reigns supreme will inevitably end up in discord and chaos. That is what some of the most perceptive of the modern philosophers seem to be teaching us, not to speak of the classical Greek philosophers who always placed harmony and moderation in centre stage of the public agora.

Finally, we ought to also take notice that most of these philosophers insisting on politeness, be they ancients or moderns, were steeped in a Humanistic and Liberal Arts education emphasizing the poetical, with human dignity at its core and the education of the heart as well as that of the mind, for as Pascal put it "the heart has reasons that reason knows not." That explains why they could deal with the scientific realm of human knowledge (the realm of the I-it) without abusing it and without risking dehumanization. We would be wise to imitate them.

PART ONE
PART TWO