Civic Essay 2: Citizens Need Not Apologize for Any Behavior
In "Civic Essay 1", I called on society to establish a consensus: morality can only be a mirror for inward examination. If a citizen's behavior is suspected of violating morality but has not crossed the legal red line, no form of moral characterization or judgment should be directed at that individual in public space.
We often see scenes like this: when some act causes an uproar in public opinion, the crowd often swarms in and demands that the person involved "come out and apologize." But based on the above consensus, I put forward an unfashionable view: citizens need not apologize to any unit or individual in public, and society should not require individual citizens to apologize in public.
Why? Because "demanding an apology" is itself moral coercion wearing the cloak of justice.
Let us first discuss pure moral blemishes. If the citizen has merely violated subjective morality but not the law, then since moral standards differ from person to person, as stated in "Civic Essay 1," morally characterizing an individual in public space is itself a transgression. Any "statement of apology" must necessarily include a description of one's own immoral behavior and self-deprecation. Requiring citizens to apologize publicly is essentially requiring that citizen to be forced to submit to the subjective will of a group of people holding different moral standards, and to admit that their own behavior is "immoral." Since whatever is not forbidden by law is permitted, individuals have no obligation to bow their heads to the public for their private morality.
What if illegal behavior is involved? When a citizen violates the law, they should indeed accept sanctions from the state's coercive organs. But modern constitutionalism gives citizens negative liberty in speech: the freedom "not to be forced to express opinions contrary to one's inner conviction." A person who breaks the law must accept legal trial and punishment, but that does not mean they must inwardly agree with the judgment of the law or the public.
Perhaps someone will object: China's Civil Code and the civil laws of many countries all make "apology" a statutory way of assuming civil liability. When an infringer is forced to lower their head in public, the ritual itself confirms to all society that "the victim is right and the perpetrator is wrong." This public confirmation of right and wrong can relieve the victim's self-doubt (gaslighting effect). If offenders are not required to apologize, how should victims be comforted?
First, although current law indeed contains such provisions, debate in legal scholarship over whether compelled apology infringes citizens' "negative liberty of speech" has never ceased. Fortunately, modern judicial practice has already begun to compromise with reason. A common current practice is that if the losing party refuses to apologize, the court no longer physically forces them to open their mouth, but instead publishes the judgment in a newspaper or online (at the losing party's expense), thereby replacing the "apology" to achieve the purpose of eliminating the impact. This precisely confirms that the law is also trying to strip away coercive discipline over individuals' subjective psychology and return to the repair of objective results.
Moreover, this objection seems compassionate but is actually dangerous. If we put ourselves in the victim's position, then for criminal offenses of an egregious nature, rather than seeing the perpetrator offer a hypocritical and unwilling apology, what the victim should want to see more is the perpetrator receiving the legal punishment they deserve. In fact, criminal law rarely uses apology as a mode of punishment; it mostly uses fixed-term imprisonment and civil compensation. For defamation that infringes reputation, true healing should be to use mainstream media and state public-opinion tools to lay out facts and clarify rumors in order to restore the victim's reputation, while making the perpetrator bear the publicity costs. Forcing an infringer to bow their head and apologize in public certainly acknowledges to all society that the victim is right, but it can easily mislead the public into thinking that "one submissive apology is more important and more capable of proving the truth than real factual clarification." Over time, the public will see someone bowing their head to apologize and assume they must be at fault. This can easily produce a situation in which social elites and privileged classes use their social resources to abuse private punishment and force innocent people to apologize. When ordinary people have no choice but to bow their heads out of fear, the negative cycle in which private punishment replaces law is completely formed.
Someone may point out a conceptual slide: "I should not be forced to apologize" and "I need not apologize" are two different concepts. If society reaches a consensus that "citizens need not apologize," would that instead create a new kind of moral coercion, saying to those who genuinely want to publicly apologize to make up for mistakes: "Since there is no need to apologize, why are you yielding and apologizing?"
This needs to be clarified: I do not mean to express that "apology is submission to tyranny." Rather, I emphasize that the act of apologizing should be a spontaneous choice made by the citizen who made a mistake based on their inner morality. It is a positive freedom of speech, and should not be urged by public opinion, much less compelled by law.
Someone may ask: if everyone who makes a mistake (such as cutting in line or a minor breach of contract) resolutely refuses to apologize, will society not have to send every small friction to costly courts? Is apology not a low-cost social lubricant that fills the vacuum left by law?
First, I have no intention of arguing that citizens should never apologize when they make mistakes. That obviously violates public order and good customs. My appeal has strict limiting elements: individuals (not organizations or other units) should not be required to apologize to any unit in public (not in private).
Here I supplement the definition of "public occasion" that was not detailed in "Civic Essay 1": namely, an occasion where unfamiliar third parties are present, and where the "person at fault" and the unfamiliar third parties are able to notice each other's existence.
Based on this definition, one-on-one negotiations, chat groups where everyone knows each other, and even WeChat Moments do not strictly count as public occasions. By contrast, posting public content on public-domain social media (such as Weibo, Xiaohongshu, or Zhihu) belongs to public expression. In addition, if an evaluation is seen by unfamiliar third parties because others forwarded or relayed it, not out of the speaker's subjective will, this should not be regarded as the speaker violating the social consensus; otherwise, there would be no occasion other than being alone where one could speak. At the same time, the original intention of my opposition to public trials in "Civic Essay 1" is to prevent tyranny of the majority from bringing mental pressure to individuals and thereby brewing group murder. Therefore, moral evaluation of the deceased (such as historical figures) in public does not count as violating this consensus, because the person themselves can no longer perceive it.
The more unfamiliar third parties present in an occasion, the stronger its publicness. The stronger the publicness of the occasion, the more thoroughly moral coercion or demands for apology directed at individuals violate this consensus. Taking "cutting in line" as an example: if, after being reminded by the person cut in front of, the line-cutter voluntarily apologizes out of their own morality and returns to their place, that is of course best. If they do not repent, the person cut in front of certainly has the right to demand an apology. But if society has formed the consensus I advocate, then when the person cut in front of asks the other party to apologize, they should restrain their volume and minimize public attention as much as possible. Even if we set aside consensus and talk only about practical effects, if the person cut in front of tries to use the public gaze to force the line-cutter to bow their head in public, they often will not achieve their goal and may instead anger the other party, producing an even more serious conflict. Society indeed cannot send every small friction to court, but it should even less put the cart before the horse by using public trial to escalate it into a major conflict before handing it to the court.
Someone may ask: this article repeatedly uses "individual," but what if this "individual citizen" is a public figure who holds enormous resources (such as a celebrity or major influencer)? Their behavior has strong public externalities. Is the public's demand that they apologize publicly not a legitimate check on power? If they are treated the same as everyone else, would the article not become a shield for privileged classes to evade public responsibility?
It is true that the behavior of public figures can produce social impact, but this absolutely does not mean they should, as individuals and by real name, be placed in public for moral trial and privacy exposure. Everyone is equal before the law. Whether an ordinary person who happened to stand in the wind and become famous, or a powerful and influential celebrity, their privacy and freedom of speech should be protected just like those of ordinary citizens, rather than being forcibly demanded as something they must surrender.
First, not all citizens pushed onto the stage voluntarily become public figures. For those individuals involuntarily exposed under the spotlight, social attention itself is already an erosion of privacy; using them as moral targets for public trial is a second deprivation of their basic human rights. Second, for those public figures who self-hype and hope to gain influence, influence itself has already given them pressure to restrain their words and actions. Chinese law contains explicit restrictions and punishments for negative speech that is "inciting" or "contrary to public order and good customs," as well as for severe social impact caused by readership or repost volume (see the Criminal Law, Public Security Administration Punishments Law, and Civil Code). Public figures' speech has wide influence and is naturally more likely than ordinary people's speech to touch legal boundaries; the law already hangs over their heads. If, on top of this, society also tolerates the public making moral evaluations of their words and deeds at will, how would they dare use their influence to promote social progress?
Take the famous American civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. as an example. He was once exposed as having extramarital affairs and a dissolute private life, which contrasted sharply with his public image as a Baptist pastor and moral exemplar. The FBI once tried to feed these scandals to the major mainstream media of the time in order to destroy King's reputation. But at that time, American journalism generally had a tacit understanding of "not reporting the private lives of public figures," and the media generally sympathized with the civil-rights movement, so they refused to cooperate with the FBI in publishing the reports. It was precisely thanks to this social sense of boundary, which did not tear apart public figures' private morality, that the American Black civil-rights movement could proceed in full swing.
It is worth mentioning that, unlike Martin Luther King Jr., public figures in modern society (celebrities) often highly commercialize their "persona" and "words and deeds." If a celebrity's "single/devoted spouse/top student persona" is itself a tool for obtaining commercial benefit, then when the persona collapses and the public despises them or demands an apology, the public's mentality is not merely moral judgment, but also contains a consumer-rights mentality of having been deceived by false advertising.
This mentality is understandable. However, if the public feels deceived by a public figure, the rational approach is to vote with their feet, withdraw commercial support, and refuse to consume their products; that is market sanction. Business belongs to business, morality belongs to the individual. The market may abandon them, but as individuals like all other citizens, society should not spiritually pressure them to apologize.
In summary, whether for purely immoral behavior or illegal behavior that crosses the bottom line, citizens should not be forced, nor need they, to apologize to any unit in public. Members of our society should reach a consensus and abandon the bad habit of using morality to force citizens to apologize in public.
--- Digression ---
The "public figures" described in the final paragraphs of this article do not include individual citizens who serve as representatives of public power (politicians). I will think through and discuss that separately in later articles concerning public power.