Civility, as its name implies, denotes a quality or social form characteristic of a particular kind of human association: a civil society. In its idealized form, civility can be said to be the distinctive virtue or excellence of the civil association, in the way that courage is for military associations or industriousness for enterprise associations.

This means that the topic of civility can be discussed in any number of ways, depending on what one understands to be taken in by the notion of civil society. Minimally, a civil society can simply designate the rule of law, and civility would then mean law-abidingness or an enduring, stable disposition toward law-abidingness, together with various manifestations of such a disposition. Any fuller understanding of the meaning and various dimensions of civil virtues and their relation to civility (virtues such as public-spiritedness, civic responsibility, and patriotism) will then depend on one's theory of the modern polity itself – the civitas, its origins, social purpose, and authority – all in order to define the nature of a civis and the various virtues of such a human type. Here the original or fundamental question would be: What makes a human association a civil one (or to use our more familiar but now quite complex and confusing term, a “political” one)? and such a question leads one quickly to the land of philosophical giants, to the likes of Aristotle, Hobbes, and Hegel and to very daunting, intimidating issues.