Notes on “Gossip” by Sissela Bok

We are reluctant to praise gossip even though we are usually willing toparticipate in it. We might not mind being recognized as good parents, a good worker,and she says even a good lover, but probably nobody wants to be known as a goodgossip. Bok begins her essay by discussing the questionable morality of all gossip. And she mentions several philosophers’ views on gossip, such as Aquinas who sawpeople who gossip as distinguished “talebearers” and “backbiters.” Kierkegaardhated all gossip and declared it superficial and creating a false fellow-felling.Heidegger said that it “perverts genuine efforts at understanding by making peoplethink they already know everything.” Bok maintains that even though gossip has been defined as cheap, superficial,intrusive, unfounded, and even vicious, that this may cause us to overlook the wholenetwork of human exchanges of information through gossip. She defines gossip as “informal personal communication about otherpeople who are absent or treated as absent.” Gossip is informal in that it is not likecourt proceedings, hospital records, lectures or biographies. It is also informal becauseit happens almost spontaneously and relies on humor and guesswork. Five reasons why we may use gossip instead of more formal means of communication:

1. Secrecy—gossip increases whenever information is scarce.2. Personal communication—it is conveyed to one or more persons usually in

personal encounters by telephone, letter or the mass media.3. The information is about persons—and this makes gossip a vehicle for moral

evaluation. It lends itself to comparing ourselves with others. Bok says thatthe result then is hypocrisy—judging the lives of others when we know wewouldn’t want ours to be judged.

4. Rumor—this is a larger category and usually has to do with war, the stockmarket etc.

5. Gossip is about other people—absent, isolated or excluded. Gossip isgenerally not about the individuals partaking in the gossip.

According to Bok none of these is morally problematic in its own right. Because wecan gossip about who’s moving, who might marry, who might be too ill to work, etc. But there are lots of instances when these five elements may present moral problems.

1. If it is personally invasive or degrading about someone who is absent, then inthis situation, gossip can wreak havoc on those spoken of and the gossipsthemselves.

2. Gives example of the leak by the FBI Agent about Jean Seberg as a member ofthe Black Panthers. At that time, Newsweek published the unsupported

information all over the world. However, most gossip according to Bok lies somewhere between these two extremes. There are three (3) types of Reprehensible Gossip

1. Breach of confidence2. Gossip that the speaker knows to be false3. Unduly invasive gossip

Trivializing Gossip

1. This is what Kierkegaard and Heidegger were talking about. It creates aleveling effect and makes shallow and ordinary things that are unfathomable.

2. It levels because it talks of everyone in the same terms no matter how good orgifted, everyone is discussed is on the same level.

Items:

1. Many people are known as “gossips.”2. At the extreme there is the pathological gossip whose whole life revolves

around delving into everyone’s private lives. In the last paragraph, Bok saysthat gossip doesn’t have to be worthless and debilitating. And here is whereshe takes a little zing at the other philosophers.

Bok’s arguments against the other philosophers:

1. One cannot read their strictures without sensing their need to stand aloof, tomaintain distance, to hold common practices vulgar.

2. They deny the depth and diversity of social intercourse just as gossip can do.3. When something such as gossip is stereotyped the speaker is making a moral

judgment and ends up moralizing.4. And finally, this can be used to avoid a fuller understanding of human beings

and their efforts to make sense of their lives.