Philosophy

Do you think that etiquette is a proper subject of philosophy? I wonder why the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has several articles on morality and law but none on etiquette.

Comments

You should ask the Stanford Encyclopedia, but it is certainly up there as a significant topic in the thought of Aristotle and Confucius, for example, and continues to be one of the areas of ethical discussion much debated by everyone. I suppose there is a tendency for etiquette to be seen as trivial and class-based, but at its best it represents the rules for treating people which do not fail to respect them and deals with them appropriately, morally speaking. Philosophers tend to prefer to discuss moral issues when they are rather dramatically presented, as in choices between killing people, or who is going to be saved and who not when not everyone can be saved. These issues do not fortunately arise for most of us most of the time, but etiquette does, and gives us a real opportunity to embody our beliefs in behavior.

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