Question What would be the better choice: truth that will make you bitter or a lie that would make you happy? Let's say truth would be the better choice. Now the follow-up question: what is there to truth that makes it more valuable than happiness, even if this happiness is produced by a lie?

Accepted:
December 8, 2010

Comments

Here's one way to respond. If one were to suppose, with Kant, that human dignity is intinsically valuable, and that lying to another--even if that lie would promote the other's happiness, say by sparing that person a harsh and painful truth--does not respect that person' dignity, by failing to--in Kant' terminology--treat that person as an end-in-itself worthy of respect--then one might therefore conclude that one has a duty to tell others the truth, and, since, again according to Kant, duty does not admit of exceptions, one cannot compromise that duty in any cae whatsoever, regardless of the consequences of so doing.

Of course, this response presupposes some very strong claims about the nature of human beings and the significance of duty. Implicit, too, is the assumption that morality is more intrinsically valuable than happiness. This is not to say that Kant, or a Kantian, wouldn't recognize the significance of promoting the happiness of others--if I remember correctly, Kant does so, explicitly, in Groundwork 1--but rather that the demands of duty, for Kant, take precedence over promoting the happiness of others.

If, by contrast, one took the maximization of happiness as the basis for deciding which acts are permissible, one might have reason to tell a lie in order to promote the happiness of another. (Although it's not clear that in the case under consideration, even a utilitarian who takes as her ultimate end the maximization of happiness would endorse lying. Her reasons for so doing, of course, would differ significantly from that of the Kantian, and, I must confess that I find the Kantian approach more intuitively attractive than other alternatives.)