Never To Lie? Sissela Bok, Lying Contemporary Moral Problems Professor Doug Olena

Never To Lie? Sissela Bok, Lying Contemporary Moral Problems Professor Doug Olena

Chapter Preface 33 To use speech, then, for the purpose of deception, and not for its appointed end, is a sin. St. Augustine By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. Immanuel Kant

Chapter Outline Rejecting All Lies 33 Conflicts of Duty 39 Religious Prohibitions 42

Rejecting All Lies 33 The simplest answer to the problems of lying, at least in principle, is to rule out all lies. St. Augustine defined lying as having one thing in one s heart and uttering another with the intention to deceive. For him there was no justifiable falsehood. But there were differences between lies, some worse than others.

Rejecting All Lies 33 St. Augustine set up an eight-fold distinction between lies of different kinds. The worst were lies uttered in the teaching of religion. The most forgivable lies were those that harm no one and yet save someone from physical defilement. All these lies in his eight-fold list were sins, but most easily forgiven were the beneficial lies.

Rejecting All Lies 34 All lies were judged by the intention behind them and their effects. Three methods were used to skirt these prohibitions. 1. Allow for pardoning of some lies. 2. Some deceptive statements are not falsehoods, merely misinterpreted by the listener. 3. To claim that certain falsehoods do not count as lies.

Rejecting All Lies 34 First, For Aquinas, building on Augustine s eightfold distinction, only mischievous, or malicious, lies, told to harm some one were mortal sins. The others were forgivable. 35 Second, Mental Reservations: Because Augustine left out of his definition the intent to deceive it left room for the following loophole: If you say something misleading to another and merely add a qualification to it in your mind so as to make it true, you cannot be responsible for the misinterpretation made by the listener.

Rejecting All Lies 37 Third, Grotius argued that a falsehood is a lie in the strict sense of the word only if it conflicts with a right of the person to whom it is addressed. A robber, for instance, has no right to the information he tries to extort. Grotius returned to discussion the possibility that some lies are justifiable.

Rejecting All Lies 38 Immanuel Kant, however refused to distinguish between lies. He takes issue, first, with the idea that any generous motive, any threat to life, could excuse a lie. Kant rejects all lies. He takes the duty of truthfulness to be an unconditional duty which holds in all circumstances ; a lie, even if it does not wrong any particular individual, always harms mankind generally, for it vitiates the source of the law.

Conflicts of Duty 39 For although veracity is undoubtedly an important duty, most assume that it leaves room for exceptions. Kant appeals to the standard case of the murder inquiring about your friend who has taken sanctuary in your house. 41 He concludes that if you lie to the murderer, you become responsible for all the bad that happens, whether your friend is killed or not. 41 If however you tell the truth, you have done nothing wrong.

Conflicts of Duty 40 Bok refers to a scenario that puts lying on par with violence, when Cardinal Newman suggests that on coming to the door the murderer, once his intent is known, is attacked by the house owner to prevent the murderer from having access to the owner s friend. Both lying and violence are coercive, but is lying a bad choice in this circumstance? Kant believes that if one lies, one annihilate[s] one s human dignity; yet for these others, to reply honestly, and thereby betray one s friend would in itself constitute a compromise of that dignity.

Conflicts of Duty I think how self serving it would be to absolve myself of all danger when a friend remains in danger. 40, 41 Is there a conflict in duty to lie to the evil empire about some fugitives who are escaping it. Their lives would be in danger if one told the truth. 41 Bok reminds us that force has been justifiable in all cases of wrongful threat to life, why not lying to preserve life? Kan t theory cannot comprehend this. Theorists like Kant realize their stance is counterintuitive.

Religious Prohibitions 42 Almost all the evidence for ruling out lies altogether comes from a religious source. These prohibitions are based on revelation, the Bible or some other document regarded as irrefutable. There are lists of sins in the Bible as well as in popular literature. In Dante s Inferno, deceivers are tormented in the eighth circle of Hell, lowest of all except for that inhabited by traitors.

Religious Prohibitions 43 Kant was influenced by his pietistic upbringing and many of his remarks framed in the language of natural purposiveness could easily be translated into divine intervention. 43 Beneath the belief in the divine command to forgo all lying at all costs is yet another belief: that some grievous punishment will come to those who disobey such commands.

Religious Prohibitions 44 Such speculation obviously goes beyond the realm of ethics and belongs squarely in that of faith. Any complete prohibition of lying, even in circumstances of threats to innocent lives, must, in order for it to be reasonable, rely on some belief that the lie is associated with a fate worse than death.

Religious Prohibitions 44 For many who believe in such retribution do not agree that it will strike all who lie. Some hold that many lies may be forgiven; others argue that God never did rule out all lies; still others that not all we think of lying is, in fact, lying.

Religious Prohibitions 45 To sum up, two beliefs often support the rigid rejection of all lies: that God rules out all lies and that He will punish those who lie. Some reject one or both of these beliefs. In the absence of some vast terror associated with lying I have to agree that there are at least some circumstances which warrant a lie. And foremost among them are those where innocent lives are at stake, and where only a lie can deflect the danger.

Religious Prohibitions 46 Kant states that by a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. Bok suggests that this statement can be made true when it is used to deflect any habitual practice of lying. Bok asks the question about which lies can be told now that the absolute prohibition against lies doesn t seem as telling as it did before.