The republican theory of the State traditionally focuses on the centrality of virtue inherent to the civic man. The present dissertation investigates the problem of civility from an approach that distinguishes the potentialities of the common man. It elaborates a concept of civility as competence. The work transcends the disciplinary boundaries of Law with the objective of (re) constructing a more comprehensive theory about the theme proposed. Basically, two theoretical movements are undertaken: on the one side, the reconstruction of the notion of human competence; on the other, the signaling of the implications of this theoretical framework for the design of a political theory based on the idea that civility is generated by a specific mental state potentially present in al common man. It proposes, in the end, that civility is revealed in ordinary processes of focalized social interaction which demand the exercise of discursive competences for the resolution of problems.