Imagine this scenario:
Your friend comes to you, all excited, flaunting her new dress. But, you don’t think the dress suits her. In fact, you suspect, she couldn’t have found anything worse.
Question:
What do you do in this situation? Do you tell the truth? Or do you try to be nice and polite, and say that she looks gorgeous?
The question whether one should or should not lie has been of great interest to moral philosophers for millennia. As you would expect, different thinkers have come up with different answers. Let’s try to understand these views before we come to the original question.
Lying is always wrong
No, not lying in bed, come on?
The philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that lying is always morally wrong. To make his point clearer, Kant suggested two reasons why he considered it wrong. First, lying corrupts the most important quality of your being human: your ability to make free, rational choices. Every time you tell a lie, it damages your moral worth. Second, your lies rob others of their freedom to choose rationally. When you tell a lie, you are misleading someone to do something that you want them to do instead of letting them make their own choices.
One example that often comes up to counter Kant’s view is that of a serial killer asking the location of your friend (who is hiding in your room). What would you do, then?
Kant’s answer is the same. Lying still remains morally wrong. Sounds disturbing, right? Remember where Kant is coming from. He sees every individual as an independent moral agent and wants everyone to bear the burden of their own choices. The other point worth noting is that if we don’t draw a strict line between the truth and lies, we may fall into the trap of telling a lie wherever it deems fit.
Lying is sometimes acceptable, even necessary
Let’s move from idealism to pragmatism. This is what most of us follow most of the time. The idea here is, use lying as a tool to achieve greater good. In the above mentioned example of a serial killer, we can use a lie to save our friend’s life.
This view can be found in many ancient philosophies, from the Indian epic Mahabharata to Plato’s Republic. Plato justifies the lies that governments (sometimes) have to tell the people for their own good. Just like a parent would tell a harmless lie to their child. These are paternalistic lies, or as Plato would call them, “Noble lies”.
Should I lie and be nice, or Not?
Let’s come back to the original question. What should you say to your friend about the dress? Here, the author and philosopher Sam Harris’s views can be helpful.
In his book Lying, Sam Harris discusses the troubles that come with lying. On the one hand, he acknowledges that lying would be justified in certain cases, such as when it saves the life of your friend. But, on the other hand, one must remember the cost of telling a lie at all times.
For example, when you tell a little white lie, just to be polite or avoid conflict, it may lead to distrust. To lie is to sacrifice our integrity, and to place the possibility of deep and meaningful bonds with fellow humans at risk.
At the same time it may cause trouble to our own mind. Telling a lie, though a small one, often means that we may have to repeat it or weave more lies around it. This simply adds to the psychological burden. In the end, either our web of lies gets caught or we continue lying — we remain miserable in both instances. Truth liberates, Harris believes, and lying bogs us down.
What is the right thing to do, then?
It’s fairly straightforward. You don’t have to make a choice between the truth and politeness. You can tell the truth, politely. So when your friend asks you about her new dress, you give your honest opinion in such a way that she does not feel bad and instead understands your point of view to make better choices.
But, you knew that already, didn’t you?
Reference books:
Kalampedia 