The Politeness Ethic and the Development of the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England

The transition of the age of enlightenment has been interrogated in several ways. Weber traces the relationship between asceticism and the rise of capitalism in the seventeenth century. Elias discusses the cultivation of civility, founded on rationalization, social constraints and self-restraint, in interrogating the making of the French courtiers and bourgeois society. In analysing the development of the public sphere, Habermas identifies the importance of conversation, predicated on rationality and sociability. Foucault stresses the disciplining of the self to prepare the individuals to participate in the public sphere. To contribute to the above dialogue, this thesis interrogates the idiom of politeness as a constituent of the ethical and aesthetic landscape of eighteenth-century England. It analyses the themes of asceticism, rationality and sociability implicit in the three components of politeness: self-cultivation, social interaction and cultural construction. To trace the rise and pursuit of politeness, this thesis refers to the writing of the third Earl of Shaftesbury, the journal of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, correspondence of Josiah Wedgwood, and secondary historical literature. This thesis interrogates the life of Wedgwood, a non-Calvinist, to illustrate that capitalism in the post-puritan era did not function on a mechanistic foundation as suggested by Weber. Rather, it proposes that the ethic of politeness, rooted in asceticism and predicated on rationality and sociability, exerted its influence on the new class of gentlemen, represented by Wedgwood in his role as a capitalist, cultural producer and citizen-patriot. Using the empirical evidence collected, this thesis argues that the reformulation of the Continental courtly notion of civility provided a new polite idiom that expanded the stratum of the social elite, and established a new basis for the political legitimacy and social identity of the ascendant commercial class. It concludes that the ethic of politeness, which facilitated the new aristocratic-bourgeois alliance, also supported the development of the public sphere in eighteenth-century England as theorised by Habermas.