At the risk of repeating what I've said in an earlier post, I feel it's important to respond to an email sent to me by an angry young man who suggests that rudeness is a worthwhile price to pay for sincerity and authenticity and that great artists can not only be excused their bad manners, but also their cruelty towards others.
Amongst those he calls upon to support this argument is Nietzsche ...
Now, it's unfortunate that there are still readers of the latter who refuse to acknowledge that central to his ethics and the cultivation of the self are what he terms the four cardinal virtues: honesty, courage, magnanimity, and, finally, politeness [1]. This last virtue being just as crucial as the first and neither compromised nor negated by it.
In other words, being honest with oneself doesn't justify being impolite or ill-mannered to others and moving beyond good and evil doesn't mean behaving in a boorish or brutal manner. And whilst it's true that Nietzsche rejects the Christian virtue of pity [Mitleiden] and speaks of the
positive role that cruelty has played in the formation of man (often
using Grausamkeit as synonymous with Kultur), so too does he privilege
terms such as benevolence [Wohlwollen] and joy [Freude].
Ultimately, Nietzsche is a eudaimonic philosopher (if of a rather unusual kind); i.e., one concerned with promoting (and enhancing) the happiness and wellbeing of man as a species. This is particularly evident in his Epicurean mid-period works, wherein he writes, for example, of those little,
daily acts of kindness that, although frequent, are often overlooked by
those who study morals and manners; the smiling eyes and warm
handshakes which display what he terms politeness of the heart [2].
And so, whilst it's true that, for Nietzsche, what are virtues in one may be vices in another (and vice versa), I can't imagine him ever being anything other than courteous in his own life. Thus, whilst he repeatedly encourages everyone to become what they are, that means giving style to the chaos within and listening to one's intellectual conscience; it surely doesn't mean becoming coarse, crass and crude [ungehobelt].
In conclusion ... Being rude, lacks discipline; it's base and lazy behaviour. Politeness is an acknowledgment of the other person's uniqueness of being; their starry singularity. My angry young correspondent would thus do well to remember that spiritual strength and passion, when accompanied by bad manners, only provoke loathing.
Notes
[1] These four cardinal virtues are found in Daybreak, §556. Five years later, Nietzsche provides a modified list consisting of courage, insight, sympathy, and solitide; see Beyond Good and Evil, §284. Although he continually supplemented this list and substituted terms, he never made rudeness a virtue.
[2] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1996), I. 2. 49.
This phrase, politeness of the heart, was earlier used by Goethe who saw it as closely allied to love. It was also used, in 1892, by Henri Bergson in a lecture to students. For Bergson, kindness of the heart helps evoke a better future by creating the conditions in which positive change can unfold (we are tempted to call it a form of grace). Bergson also spoke of politeness of manners (i.e., everyday courtesies) and politeness of spirit (compassion or empathy).
