Giving courtesy a shot in the arm

SINGAPORE - Last Tuesday night, a 47-year-old man spat repeatedly at two women in a dispute over queue-jumping at a bus interchange.

If the man, an odd-job worker, was not mentally disturbed, this incident would represent a truculence not seen very frequently even in Singapore's less-than-always-gracious society.

This sort of nastiness busts the rules of civility, which are merely social rules, not laws. But it does raise the question of whether rudeness could ever be legislated away or graciousness brought in by law.

A classmate of mine from graduate school who was in town told me that, in his native Germany, the regulation of civility actually helps to maintain respectful interpersonal relations.

People are more polite by law in Germany, where rudeness is regulated by the law of Beleidigung ("insult"), he said. Perhaps Singapore could pass such a law?

This German law criminalises not just odious behaviour but even words and gestures that show what the law calls "disrespect or lack of respect" for another person in Germany. (But in practice, this applies only to Germans, not foreigners.)

For example, calling someone "you swine" or "you jerk" is a crime. So too, if you tap a finger on your forehead (which is called making "the bird" sign) to indicate to another person that you think he is not right in the head.

Giving the finger - or "stinkefinger" in German - is criminalised. So is addressing someone who is not a close friend with the informal "du" instead of "Sie" (which is always capitalised in writing) for "you". Incredibly, such infractions can attract a jail term of up to two years or a fine.

The law of insult does not protect reputation as such but personal honour instead.

Reputation comes under the law of defamation when one counters embarrassing allegations about oneself made in public. But in defending one's honour, which comes under the law of insult, one is fighting to have another person show one respect, whether in private or public.

Here, rudeness is seen as an assault on the victim's personal honour. This principle inheres in the fabric of social life in Germany today, informing issues that might seem petty to outsiders.

It requires that everyone - actually everyone who is racially German, though Jews are an exception, but not Turks or other foreigners - be accorded a minimum of honour and respect.

This notion of respect matters in German law and society in a way that might not make much sense in the United States or Singapore, my friend ventured, for neither has had Europe's experience with the horrors of Fascism.

The horrors of the 1930s and 1940s might explain the current European commitment to legislating against behaviour that insults human dignity, which became constitutionally guaranteed in many states in Europe after World War II.

In Darker Legacies Of Law In Europe (2003), Yale law professor James Whitman notes that this is indeed how most Europeans explain why human dignity is so pronounced in their law.

But in fact, their cultures of respect go back much further than 1945. Professor Whitman traces the law of respect to 17th-century aristocratic culture, particularly the notion of aristocratic honour captured most poignantly in their duels to death.

In days of yore, an aristocrat was duty bound to "demand satisfaction" when insulted by another. Being slapped on the ear or being spat at were the most demeaning of insults but even a mere slight could result in a demand for a duel to restore one's hurt honour.

By the 19th century, however, the higher bourgeoisie had begun imitating the aristocrats, resorting to duels as well. Eventually, it came to be seen as a social evil and was banned.

To provide a court alternative to the duel as a way of dealing with insults, many German localities passed statutes of insult that really applied only to males of the aristocracy.

This was because plebeians who showed disrespect to an aristocrat were just beaten up, not challenged to a duel that involved only status-equals.

In 1871, the new Imperial Criminal Code was passed, which included today's version of the law of insult. But this law of insult did not yet apply to all Germans.

It was only a few decades later that the Nazis would come along to make this law applicable to all white German males, regardless of social status. In fact, the Nazis stressed the centrality of honour, particularly for the low-status white German male, in everyday life and at the workplace.

Having first reinstated the duel for its army officers, the Nazis then proceeded to entitle every German male to demand the duel to defend his honour.

Thus, every German was to be considered a person of honour and they (Nazis) would protect every German's honour to the death in return for his contributions and sacrifice for the people.

In this rather unexpected way, a new social equality was born for all Germans. Even if Nazi economic policies failed to bring social equity, the law accorded everyone an equal status and gave each German (male) the right to defend his honour.

If being German was viewed as an intrinsic merit and source of honour, then being foreign was an intrinsic source of inferiority. Thus a disdain of the foreign was born.

Fostering this form of national pride and arrogance in no small way won popular support for the Nazis, despite their vicious excesses.

Discomfiting as it might be for a German today, his country's law of respect for the protection of honour is rooted in this Nazi "nationalisation" and "democratisation" of honour for the masses.

In Germany's Constitution, free speech is guaranteed but Article 5(2) limits it by "the right to personal honour", thus constitutionalising and democratising the aristocratic right of honour.

In Prof Whitman's opinion, this kind of German egalitarianism turns everyone into aristocrats with the right to defend their honour, whereas US egalitarianism makes everyone equal plebeians with no sense of aristocratic honour that needs to be recovered when and if hurt.

The German case suggests that a law against insult may sound reasonable as a way to compel civil behaviour but is, in fact, embedded within certain value systems of aristocratic honour and behaviour.

If so,  that has no feudal or fascist past, which the US - and Singapore - just happens to be.merely passing a law of respect will not lead to more civility in the kind of egalitarian society

andyho@sph.com.sg

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