In this section, I will take for granted the common intuitive notion of what constitutes a lie and simply ask, ‘Is a falsehood a lie only if the listener has a legitimate right to the truth?’ In other words, should the definition of a lie, no matter what the definition contains, always include the clause ‘to someone who has a right to the truth?’ The idea that someone could avoid lying and yet still knowingly express falsehoods appears to have had as its first major proponent Hugo Grotius, who distinguished between falsiquuim (falsehood) and mendacium (lie) on the basis of this condition. Yet
according to Kant, having a ‘right to the truth’ is an absurd notion. If Kant is correct, then the additional criterion Grotius adds is problematic.
Definitions eliciting a right to the truth are perhaps the least suited for the absolutist point of view, in part because of the inherent ambiguity that comes from having a moral term (lying) be defined by another moral term (rights).1 If one adopts this
1 True moral absolutes, as John Finnis explains, must be specifiable without reference to any evaluative
definition, his understanding of what constitutes a lie becomes contingent upon the rights of the person who is addressed by the speaker. The definition also suggests that lies are actually a species of unjust acts. ‘Right to the truth’ definitions are in some sense saying that if one communicates a falsehood justly, then it is not a lie. For many, this approach seems quite reasonable. Lies do harm to others, and it would therefore follow that lies are a type of injustice – justice being the primary social virtue, guide for proper interactions between human beings, and first virtue of social institutions.2 Others may argue that ‘the
right to the truth’ only opens the door to a broad range of exceptions, making it possible for falsehoods to be excused by simply providing a plausible justification based on the situation (ie. one that accounts for the justice of the act).
A reply to this proposal that all lies must violate a ‘right to the truth’ is provided by Immanuel Kant, who directly addresses the issue in his response to Benjamin
Constant. Constant, criticizing Kant’s absolutist rule against all lying in light of the example of the classic case involving the ‘murderer at the door,’ argues that a murderer has no right to know the truth about his intended victim’s whereabouts.3 In his argument,
Constant suggests that the proper definition of a lie be ‘a falsehood told to someone who has a right to the truth.’4 Part of the appeal this definition elicits is that room is made for
lying is defined in terms of a right to the truth, and since rights must be further evaluated, then it would seem that lying would merely be wrong by definition. John Finnis, Moral Absolutes (Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America, 1991), 1-9. See also supra 22 n40.
2 See for example John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed.(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999),
3-4.
3 Kant, “On a supposed right to lie from philanthropy” (henceforth OSRL) in Mary Gregor, ed. and trans., Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 8:425. Constant had
posed the example of a murderer at the door, who asks whether his enemy is in the house. Constant’s claim was that “To tell the truth is a duty, but only to one who has a right to the truth.”
4 John Milton defined lies similarly, saying that “Falsehood is incurred when any one, from a dishonest
motive, either perverts the truth, or utters what is false to one to whom it is his duty to speak the truth… It is
better therefore to say that stratagems, though coupled with falsehood, are lawful for the cause above assigned…..” (my emphasis). John Milton, De Doctrina Christiana, Book II in The Works of John Milton,
107
so-called harmless falsehoods, such as lies to murderers – ‘just lies,’ which Grotius and Constant would say are really not lies at all.
While the murderer at the door example will be treated in greater depth in the next chapter, one important point that Kant makes about the definition itself is relevant here. Constant’s main argument was that the murderer at the door forfeits certain rights, among them a right to the truth.5 Kant’s response to Constant highlights what he takes to be a
logical error:
[T]he expression ‘to have a right to the truth’ is meaningless… For to have a right to a truth objectively would be tantamount to saying that, as in the case with what is yours or mine generally, it is a matter of one’s will
whether a given proposition is to be true or false; and this would give rise to extraordinary logic.6
Kant is saying that the truth value of what is expressed (since truth, in this sense, is correspondence between what is thought and what is said) cannot be contingent upon whether or not someone makes a claim to that truth (which is a matter of one’s will). Otherwise, the listener’s will, rather than the speaker’s words and intention, would determine whether or not what someone says is a lie.
To illustrate this problem, imagine that I tell my brother I own a red truck when in reality I do not. If my brother places no claim (as he does towards his own property) to know the actual contents of my mind – let’s says because he’s indifferent as to the truth of my statement – then under Constant’s reasoning I do not lie to him, since he therefore
5 Constant’s argument has become a popular objection for those who deny that an absolutist position
against lying can exist. Sidgwick, for example, follows Constant when he asserts that veracity should not hold in every situation, saying: “a general right of each man to have truth spoken to him by his fellows… may be forfeited or suspended under certain circumstances.” Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th
ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), 315. Just as a criminal forfeits his right to his security when he is committing a crime, Sidgwick says, it seems reasonable to conclude that some can forfeit their right to be told the truth.
has no right to know the truth. Yet it seems strange that my statement might or might not be a lie depending upon whether or not my brother claims this truth, which is a matter of his will (given that he does so rightfully).
Lies, according to Kant, cannot be like other matters of what is owned or due (which pertains to rights). Instead, it seems that a statement is a lie simply because the assertion fails to correspond with what the speaker knows to be true (if the lack of correspondence is intentional). Perhaps some might consider a lie either right or wrong based upon their own judgement of rights or justice, excusing some while condemning others, but this issue of rightness and wrongness is a different question altogether. The question at hand is whether the condition ‘a right to the truth’ can be part of the definition
of a lie, and Kant explains that if this is included, it results in a logical error. For this reason, Kant says the ‘right to the truth’ criterion added to the definition of a lie is meaningless.7