What Is the Principle of Charity?

The principle of charity states that people ought to be more open and receptive of what other people say. They should try to view the statements of other people from the most positive angles rather than dismissing them as unintelligible. People are different, and everybody thinks and speaks differently. People are products of their environments and are shaped by factors like culture, dialect, level of education, and genetic constitution. A person who lives in a poor neighborhood may not reason in the same way as a person who lives in an affluent neighborhood. This person’s thinking process may be affected by things like a sense of just trying to survive each day. That is not to say that such a person is not bright; the problem might be in the way the person tries to make his or her point.

According to the principle of charity, an Ivy League graduate who grew up in an affluent neighborhood might be tempted to dismiss what a less affluent people are saying simply because he or she does not understand most of the slang in the speech. The principle of charity demands that the listener should make allowances when listening to another person in order to fully grasp the salient points the person is trying to make. This works both ways because the Ivy League graduate might be talking about things that do not matter to the reality of someone less educated in a poor community. Yet by applying the principle of charity, such a person will look for the most convincing parts of the other person’s speech.

Another example of the application of the principle of charity is when someone is listening to an immigrant try to speak his or her language. The immigrant might be a professor in his or her country of origin, but due to still learning the new language, his or hers thoughts might not come across as intended. By applying the principle of charity, the listener will restructure the words from the immigrant so as to arrange them in a more logical manner that makes better sense to him or her.

Another meaning that has been ascribed to the principle of meaning is that most times a failure by any listener to understand what the speaker is saying is not due to a failure by the speaker to say something intelligible. Rather, the fault lies with the listener who has failed to interpret what the speaker is saying in a manner that will make it intelligible to him or her. This is simply a difference in logical wording between various speaking patterns.