Keywords

1. Core civility criterion: Civility is mutual respect in shared responsibility.
2. Levels of civility: Civility exists to varying degrees and with varying levels of security: absent, insecure/low, open, secure, developed.
3. General welfare function: The higher the prevailing level of civility, the greater the prospects for the well-being of everyone involved.
4. Variable space: Interaction logics, forms of interaction and levels of civility influence one another, together forming a variable space of civility. This can give rise to more or less dynamic processes of endogenous development.
5. Social spatiotemporality: When civility is low, actors tend to think in narrower spatial and temporal terms; when civility is higher, their thinking extends further across space and time. Since this affects their actions, levels of civility give rise to a social spatiotemporality.
6. Humanity’s learning: Whether and how individuals learn is an open question; even more so is whether and how humanity as a whole (collectively) learns quickly enough to survive. 
7. Civility analysis: How actors relate to one another can be analysed universally through civility theory.
8. Predictive and practical capacity: Sociopolitical processes are fundamentally open-ended. Depending on the contextual conditions that exist and can be anticipated, they can be assessed with varying degrees of accuracy, but never predicted with certainty. Well-informed and determined actors have a chance of success in open-ended processes, even in cases that seem hopeless.
9. Civility ethics: From a civility-ethical perspective, actors act responsibly in accordance with the conditions that apply and can be anticipated.
10. Civility Navigation: Finding the best possible bearings and acting accordingly in a complex, ever-changing environment is what civility navigation is all about..
11. Civility policy is policy aimed at preserving and promoting civility as effectively as possible. It operates with particular sensitivity and navigational flexibility in complex, changing conditions; it can also deliberately influence other actors and conditions. :
12. Theory development: Since it was first presented as a theory of civil modernity (2018), the theory of civility has continued to evolve. It can and should become part of humanity’s collective learning.
13. Accessibility: All texts and videos on Civility Theory are freely accessible, currently in particular via the Civility gUG website. Every effort will be made to preserve and promote this free access as much as possible, even under difficult conditions.