The Ethics of Common Decency

Yotam Benziman

Published online: 10 December 2013

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Let’s begin with a few examples. The queue at the supermarket is long. My

shopping cart is full of groceries. You are standing behind me, and your cart has

only two or three items in it. I let you go ahead of me so that you can finish your

shopping quickly.

A stranger in the street approaches you and asks you if you can light his cigarette.

As a matter of course, you do.1

You help someone find his way in town, or assist an old woman to cross the

road.2

A person entering the store ahead of you holds the door open for you so it does

not slam in your face.3

Walking towards your car, about to leave the parking lot, you notice a driver

searching in vain for a spot. You motion to her to follow you.

You and I are not acquainted with each other, but we happen to sit next to each

other at a meeting. You are momentarily called out of the room and I cover your cup

with a saucer, to keep the coffee warm.4

Y. Benziman

Sapir College, Negev, Israel

Y. Benziman (&)

Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

e-mail: yotam.benziman@mail.huji.ac.il

Y. Benziman

10 Keren Hayesod Street, 90805 Mevaseret Zion, Israel

1 David Heyd, Supererogation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 149.2 Ibid, p. 2.3 Edna Ulmann-Margalit, ‘‘Considerateness,’’ Iyyun 60, 2011, p. 205.4 Ibid, p. 206.

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J Value Inquiry (2014) 48:87–94

DOI 10.1007/s10790-013-9408-7

All of these are what I will call acts of common decency. The phenomenon I’ll be

concerned with here is the decent conduct of strangers towards their fellow

strangers. This might be described as a sub-category of decency in general. Decency

can take place, in fact may even be prevalent, in cases where the agent has a specific

relationship with another person, and has therefore certain commitments towards

her. Take for example the following two cases that A. T. Nuyen cites as

manifestations of decency: the first involves paying your employees their salaries

even if your business is on the verge of bankruptcy. The second has to do with

marrying a partner when you discover that she is pregnant, even though it interferes

with your career plans.5 It is clear that in both cases the agent’s decent conduct is

affected by expectations aroused by the previous connection he has had with the

other party. He has obligations towards his employees and they have depended on

him all along; he has had a loving relationship with his partner (which is why we

describe her as, indeed, his partner.)

Similarly, one of Mathias Risse’s examples of decency is the following:

‘‘somebody may have to sell his shop and go out of business in order to make an

important operation possible for a relative towards whom he has obligations.’’6 This

short quote includes a variety of terms, which all point to the special circumstances

of the case: not only is it an ‘‘operation,’’ which is not a procedure we go through

daily, but it is an ‘‘important’’ one. The person who has to undergo it is your

‘‘relative.’’ Not only are you related, but you also have ‘‘obligations’’ towards him.

Therefore, in order to help him you must ‘‘go out of business.’’ This is indeed an

extreme measure to take, but the whole situation is extreme to begin with.

The decency I’m concerned with is much simpler. The situations described at the

beginning of this essay are intentionally ordinary, almost banal. They involve two

strangers who know nothing about each other. Perhaps they have never met before.

Perhaps they never will again. They treat each other as human beings in general

should. No more, no less.

Indeed, by ‘‘common decency’’ I mean here the very ordinary conduct one can

think of. This is decent behavior as defined in Webster’s Dictionary. ‘‘Decent’’ is

described there as ‘‘conforming to the standards of propriety,’’ but also as ‘‘fairly

good but not excellent: up to reasonable expectations.’’7 This is how we would

expect anybody to behave. Deviating from these expectations would be considered

rude and improper. And as this is what just anybody should act like, it is no accident

that the examples above describe people who are strangers to each other. There need

not be any special relationship between them. They are just human beings treating

each other properly.

Yet wouldn’t we say that letting you go past me in the queue, or covering your

cup with a saucer, is a favor that I do for you? Is it my duty to act in these ways? It

seems that the answer is: No, this is not a duty. I’m not obliged to cover your cup.

The actions I have mentioned therefore complicate and undermine the standard

classification of good actions into duties on the one hand and supererogatory acts on

5 A. T. Nuyen, ‘‘Decency,’’ The Journal of Value Inquiry 36, 2002, p. 502.6 Mathias Risse, ‘‘The Morally Decent Person,’’ Southern Journal of Philosophy 38 (2), 2000, p. 270.7 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, G & C Merriam Co., 1971.

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the other. Edna Ulmann-Margalit, from whom I’ve borrowed the last three of the

examples above, describes them as acts of considerateness. She wishes to

differentiate them from supererogatory acts of kindness. Where does the difference

lie? ‘‘Invoking a somewhat artificial distinction here, we may observe that through

the kind act one typically intends to contribute in a positive way to the wellbeing of

the other. By the considerate act, in contrast, especially toward a stranger, one

typically intends to reduce the discomfort one may be causing the other in virtue of

one’s mere presence.’’8

It seems to me that Ulmann-Margalit has in mind here one specific instance of

what she calls ‘‘considerateness’’: ‘‘You enter the lavatory in an airplane. On the

mirror above the sink a little note says: ‘Out of consideration for the next passenger,

please use your paper towel to wipe the wash basin clean.’’9 If you do it thoroughly

enough, your ‘‘mere presence’’ will indeed be unnoticed. The next passenger will

find the wash basin sparkling clean, as if you were never there. But other examples

of what Ulmann-Margalit defines as ‘‘considerateness,’’ the ones cited at the

beginning of this paper, are clearly meant ‘‘to contribute in a positive way to the

wellbeing of the other.’’ Such, for example, are motioning to the driver to follow

you to the parking spot, or covering her cup with a saucer. Thus, at least some of

Ulman-Margalit’s own examples of ‘‘considerateness’’ are cases of what she

classifies as supererogation.

Yet are they indeed cases of supererogation? Drawing the line here seems

difficult. David Heyd, from whom I borrowed the second and third examples above,

leaves unanswered the question whether ‘‘lighting the cigarette of a stranger in the

street [is] an optional act of kindness or a basic human requirement,’’ yet he does

‘‘wish to argue that such acts cannot be both obligatory and favors at the same

time.’’10 Interestingly enough, and contra to Heyd’s argument, this duality is just

what we’ve found to be the characteristic of the examples above. On the one hand,

these are favors. On the other, any decent person would act this way and therefore

one might claim that they are obligatory; or, at least, if not obligatory in the strict

sense, they seem far off from being rightly characterized as supererogatory. They

are manifestations of the right thing to do in the given situation (as we have seen,

this is largely what the term ‘‘decent’’ means.) This must at least be true of some of

the examples. Perhaps only few of us have thought of covering a stranger’s cup with

a saucer. But isn’t refusing to light somebody’s cigarette simply rude? Hence, isn’t

lighting it obligatory?

The problem with terms such as ‘‘obligatory’’ is that they seem to demand a

special kind of justification. But if, as I have hitherto insisted, we are speaking about

cases where no special relationship obtains between the agent and the other party,

what can be the basis of such justification? Consider the following description of

common decency by Laurence Thomas: ‘‘When a visibly pregnant woman gets on a

crowded metro car in which there is no seat left, mere basic human respect

recommends that some healthy person who is not pregnant should give up her seat

8 Ulmann-Margalit, ‘‘Considerateness,’’ p. 215.9 Ibid, p. 206.10 Heyd, Supererogation, p. 149.

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to the pregnant woman. Or when someone falls and suffers severe injury, mere basic

human respect recommends that someone should call for help on behalf of the

individual.’’11

These examples are similar to the cases presented at the beginning of this paper,

in that the people involved are strangers to each other. This is why Thomas speaks

about ‘‘mere basic human respect.’’ Any human being should act in the ways he

mentions. But there is a salient reason for doing so: the woman is ‘‘visibly

pregnant,’’ the falling person ‘‘suffers severe injury.’’ No special relationship

obtains between the parties, but nonetheless these are cases of special circum-

stances. Such circumstances are absent from the cases we have described. The

person I meet in the parking lot is in no great need. The person in the queue behind

me has no urgent business to attend to, at least not any that I’m aware of. What,

then, would justify my getting out of my way in order to help her?

The answer is straightforward enough. I am not getting out of my way. I am here

and she is here. I see her. For a short moment we share the same space. She has

crossed my way. It is not just a coincidence that a common feature of the majority of

the examples we have been dealing with is that they concern people meeting each

other outdoors, in public places, on the road. This stranger and I are together at the

parking lot, that stranger loses his way ‘‘in town,’’ the other one approaches you ‘‘in

the street,’’ asking you to light his cigarette. The street, the parking lot, the town, are

common to all of us. ‘‘Common’’ decency, in the cases I’m concerned with, is

common in a special sense: it is decency we show toward each other when we

happen to be together in a common place, simply because we are both there.

But can sharing the same space have moral significance? The debate about

proximity has been of interest to philosophers in recent decades. Its origins can

perhaps be traced to Peter Singer’s celebrated article ‘‘Famine, Affluence, and

Morality.’’ Singer claims that we should help people in need wherever they are, and

that ‘‘[i]t makes no moral difference whether the person I can help is a neighbor’s

child ten yards from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand

miles away.’’12 Similarly, Peter Unger argues that ‘‘the strength of moral force

doesn’t diminish with distance.’’13 Contra to both, F. M. Kamm holds that

‘‘intuitively, we think that we have greater obligations to take care of what is in the

area near us, whether this is threats that will cause harm at a distance, or persons

who are or will be victims.’’14 Opposing all three, Michael Slote states that what

should matter to us is not the issue of proximity, but rather the notion of empathy. A

person’s plight indeed concerns us more, so he claims, when we see her, but not

because of physical proximity, but rather because it’s easier for us to identify with

11 Laurence Thomas, ‘‘Liberty and a Spirit of Moral Decency,’’ International Journal of Applied Ethics

23 (2), 2011, pp. 246–247.12 Peter Singer, ‘‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality,’’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 (3), 1972, pp. 231–232.13 Peter Unger, Living High and Letting Die – Our Illusion of Innocence (New York and Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1996), p. 27.14 F. M. Kamm, ‘‘Does Distance Matter Morally to the Duty to Rescue?,’’ Law and Philosophy 19 (6),

2000, p. 672.

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her than with another person whose suffering we are aware of only ‘‘by

description.’’15

We should take a note of the fact that this philosophical debate about proximity is

mainly, perhaps solely, concerned with a person being in some kind of danger. The

examples used tend to be variations of Singer’s ‘‘shallow pond’’ case (‘‘[I]f I am

walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and

pull the child out’’16). In such a case it is clear why I should wade in: the child is

drowning. This fact carries extreme moral weight. Nothing more is needed in order

for me to act. Slote is wrong to suppose that empathy should play a role here. There

is no need for it. It is not only myself, the person who sees the child crying out for

help and has the warmest feelings towards her, who would be affected by her grave

situation. Anyone should do as much as is needed in order to save the child.

As opposed to such a case, in the cases we are concerned with it is only I who has

to act. If I am standing in front of you in the queue, I am the only one who can let

you go through. Another person who might be aware of the situation (suppose that

by some technological device what happens in the store appears on your T.V. screen

at home) has no such obligation. It is my obligation because I am there with you. It

is here that proximity plays its moral role. It is significant in non-dramatic, everyday

cases. This fact has been missed by the philosophers discussing the issue of

proximity, as they have tended to relate it to the issue of need.

The person standing behind me in the queue and the stranger seeking a parking

spot are in no grave situation of need. Of course, they will be happy with my help,

but it would be very much exaggerated to describe them as suffering without it. The

obligations that I have towards them are created by the mere fact that we are there

together in the same space. This moral dimension of proximity can also help us

differentiate between the various cases we have been discussing. I said at the outset

that they were all cases of common decency. But that does not mean that there are

no important differences between them. It seems, for example, that holding the

store’s door so that it does not slam in another’s face is more obligatory than

covering another’s cup with a saucer so that her coffee stays warm. Proximity might

supply the reason for the difference.

It should be recalled that we are speaking about cases where the parties are not

acquainted with each other. We are all strangers, going about our everyday business,

not interested in one another’s matters. This description should not be taken as a

grim one: most of us would hesitate to make matters otherwise. We are comfortable

with people minding their own business, and letting us mind our own. But then,

albeit strangers to each other, our separate ways intersect. You and I are about to

enter the same store. I can see you. We make eye contact. For a minute, we are no

longer strangers. Seeing you and then ignoring you is rude. This is why letting the

door slam in your face is unacceptable. In the cup-and-saucer case things are

different: a moment ago we shared the same space. A moment later, when you come

back into the room, we will share it again. But right now, when I’m covering your

cup with the saucer, I’m there alone. It is less obligatory than in the previous case.

15 Michael Slote, The Ethics of Care and Empathy (New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 22–25.16 Singer, ‘‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality,’’ p. 231.

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Yet for reasons that will become apparent shortly, I do want to claim that it is the

right thing to do here. Using the parameter of proximity, some cases will be easily

classified as demanding certain actions. Consider lighting another’s cigarette upon

her request. You and she were total strangers a moment ago. If it were up to you,

you might stay this way. But now she crosses the border and asks you for light. She

has made the momentary acquaintance. You cannot simply refuse. As opposed to

this, some cases will be harder to decide. Consider the case of a stranger hitchhiking

in a rather-deserted road. Your car approaches him. You certainly do not share the

same space: you are in the car, he is in the street. You do not owe him anything. But

as you approach him you make eye contact. It is your decision whether you make

the move as to include him in your space, and invite him in.

Suppose that this stranger is in no great need. It is neither a stormy night nor a

snowy, hard-to-bear afternoon. He will manage to get wherever he wishes to go

some way or another. Likewise, in none of the other cases we have been describing

are the people involved put in some kind of danger or any special circumstances.

Why, then, should we help them? My answer might seem like a rhetorical question:

why not? Why not help, as long as it does not demand much? Only holding the door

for a few seconds, only waiting in line for a few more minutes – this is all it takes.

Yet this ‘‘why not’’ is not meant to be an expression of indifference, in the sense

that it is still up to me to decide whether or not I behave in the common decent ways

described above. As a decent person this is how I should behave. Far from being a

rhetorical question, the ‘‘why not’’ formulation should be understood as directed at

somebody who may suggest that I should not light the stranger’s cigarette, or help

someone find his way in town, etc. This ‘‘somebody’’ might very well be myself. I

may have a sufficient reason why in this specific case I should refrain from acting in

the way a morally decent person usually would. Only if I lack such a reason, should

I indeed behave decently.

This characterization makes the duties of common decency imperfect duties, but

in a special sense. In order to see this, let us first look briefly at the way Immanuel

Kant and John Stuart Mill describe imperfect duties. Kant does not define them

directly. He claims that a perfect duty ‘‘admits no exception in favor of

inclination.’’17 It follows, although Kant does not say so explicitly, that an

imperfect duty does ‘‘admit exception in favor of inclination.’’

It is reasonable to interpret the notion of an imperfect duty as a case in which it is

up to the agent to decide where and how to act upon it. This is indeed how Mill uses

this concept. He speaks of ‘‘imperfect obligations’’ rather than ‘‘duties,’’ and says

that they are ‘‘those in which, though the act is obligatory, the particular occasions

of performing it are left to our choice, as in the case of charity or beneficence, which

we are indeed bound to practice, but not towards any definite person, nor at any

prescribed time.’’ Put otherwise, ‘‘duties of imperfect obligation are those moral

obligations which do not give birth to any right.’’18

17 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press), 1997, p. 31.18 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (London: Parker, Son and Bourn, West Strand, 1863), pp. 72–73.

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The actions we have been considering are indeed such that ‘‘do not give birth to

any right.’’ Even the one we found most rude to ignore, that of lighting a person’s

cigarette upon request, is not a case in which the other has a ‘‘right’’ to my action.

He cannot claim that I owe him anything. In this sense, if these actions are duties,

they are indeed imperfect ones. They are also imperfect in the sense that they

‘‘admit exception in favor of inclination.’’ Suppose that you are standing behind me

in the queue, and I’m in a hurry to watch my favorite TV show. Watching it is

certainly an inclination of mine. But it might suffice as a reason for not letting you

go past me. As opposed to this, perfect duties are ones I should perform no matter

what, with no exception.

Yet, as opposed to Mill’s description of imperfect duties, the actions of common

decency are directed ‘‘towards a definite person,’’ and done ‘‘at a prescribed time.’’

The situation I’m in, and the encounter with another sharing the same space with

me, make a demand on me, and I should act. I might be excused for not acting if I

have a good excuse, but if I don’t, then action is demanded. It is my duty to do so

and so for this particular person, because it is the decent thing to do.

The notion of ‘‘this particular person’’ should be emphasized. It seems that the

concept of imperfect duties as portrayed by Kant, and even more so by Mill, is

concentrated on the self rather than on the other. If no one is entitled to be the

beneficiary of my action of charity, then why is charity a duty in the first place? The

answer might be that I’m not doing it for her (she is not entitled to it) but for myself:

I want to (some might say, I must) be a charitable person. This might lead to a

satirical depiction of imperfect duties along the following lines: ‘‘we could all finish

with our imperfect duties on one bright afternoon by doing one merciful act, one

beneficent act, one act of charity, and so forth.’’19 Of course, one could claim that a

single act of each type is not enough, but then we would just take a few more weeks,

and get it over with.

According to the view I’m putting forward here, we can never get it over with.

Our imperfect duties of decency are directed towards specific others when we

encounter them in our daily affairs. It is not my character as charitable, beneficent or

decent that I’m concerned with when I act. It is the particular person who happens to

cross my way at the store or in the parking lot. Yet contra to what theorists like Slote

would suggest, there is no need for special sympathy to direct my action. I don’t

have to imagine how she feels, let alone acquire such a feeling myself. I don’t

envision to myself how happy she will be if I help her find her way in town, or how

distressed she will be if I don’t. I’m not even sure that she would be that happy in

the first case and so distressed in the other. We are dealing here with minor acts of

civility, considerateness, or decency. My action is directed toward her, but it is her

qua another human being – not her qua any special relationship I might have with

her. I would act the same way towards any other person. Thus it is not exactly her

that I’m thinking of as I’m acting. In fact, I might not be thinking of anybody or

anything in particular. I’m acting in this way because I’m well educated. This is

simply what decent people do.

19 Daniel Statman, ‘‘Who Needs Imperfect Duties?,’’ American Philosophical Quarterly 33 (2), 1996,

p. 212.

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As I’ve just asserted, we are dealing with minor acts. But their overall importance

is far from minor. John Kekes puts it aptly when he speaks about ‘‘identity-

conferring decency.’’ He maintains that it ‘‘is not merely customary conduct, it also,

essentially, involves the spirit of goodwill toward fellow members of one’s society.

This goodwill is a sign of the frequently unarticulated belief that fellow members of

a society share with one another a moral outlook.’’20 In other words, these small

favors that we do to each other manifest a certain picture we have in mind as to how

people should treat one another. Early in this paper I’ve spoken about the people we

encounter as our ‘‘fellow strangers.’’ The picture I’m advocating here is such that

the strangers are indeed fellows. They create with us the fabric of society. One can

imagine society as a mass of individuals, walking their separate ways, trying to

avoid each other as much as possible. The opposite picture, the one I’m suggesting,

views society as a joint venture. We do go our separate ways, but we are not trying

hard to avoid each other. When we encounter others, we try to make the situation

pleasant to them. If we can only help, we do. We are not obliged to. We can easily

find reasons not to act, and even trivial ones might suffice. But if no particular

reason is available, there is simply no good reason why not to act. This is why I’ve

included acts such as covering the stranger’s cup with a saucer, or offering one’s

place at the queue, in my account. It is no real trouble to the agent, and it is a kind

gesture to be appreciated by the stranger.

I assume that most people will want to live in such an agreeable, less hostile,

atmosphere. And this, again, strengthens the description of the acts described here

as imperfect duties. Recall that for Kant imperfect duties have to do with avoiding a

‘‘contradiction in will.’’ There is no logical contradiction in everybody not

performing the actions mentioned in the beginning of this paper. But we would not

want to live in a society inhabited only by people who lack the basic capacities that

we call ‘‘decencies.’’ When we act decently we affirm a view of human beings

looking at each other directly when they happen to share the same space, and

working in collaboration for the short period of time in which this encounter takes

place. This view of collaboration is a proof that the notion of decency is indeed

common to all of us.

20 John Kekes, Moral Tradition and Individuality (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 1991, p. 79.

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