To tell you the truth I was a bit stumped for a topic this month. My wife suggested I write about lying. I don’t know what inspired that idea. Honest.

As a child we are taught that lying is bad, a punishable offence. As adults, we quite often think that lying is sometimes justifiable, as if the vice of lying isn’t actually so black and white and you just need to be wise enough to know when it’s the benefactor of good. But is this true, or is it just another lie (a gateway lie, if you will)?

Let’s put aside those that think nothing of lying. Let’s discard the idea that moral values are simply a beggar’s toolkit for our own ends and that, if you can get away with it, lies that lead to self-fulfilment are vindicated because good only equates to one’s happiness. I’m not going to toss the caber with what, by traditional definitions, is amorality. We are born dependent, often die dependent and some spend their entire lives dependent on others. One’s happiness is not an island. Morality is the playbook for our collective happiness.

The one genuine defence of lying also acts as an easy introduction to the great divide in ethics. It goes something like “lying is ok as long as the means justifies the end”. In other words, lying will do more good than the truth.

This ethical stance is called utilitarianism and underpins most Western societies. Utilitarianism was first fully expounded in the 18th century by Jeremy Bentham, who believed that morality could be reduced to calculating the resulting happiness of an action. The greatest happiness for the greatest number. He even attempted to model how to practically undertake this axiom with an algorithm called the felicific calculus. The variables that contribute to the total score of an action are its intensity, duration, certainty, remoteness, fecundity, purity and extent.

Bentham’s rather hedonistic and, at the same time, scientific approach has been tempered and refined over time. John Stuart Mill built upon it by insisting on a qualitative distinction for human pleasures. It’s better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. He was also a minimizing utilitarian in that he believed it’s desirable to maximise happiness for the greatest number but that we are not morally obliged to do so.

Another distinction utilitarianism has developed is that between act and rule. Bentham and Mill were both concerned only with an act in isolation, whereas a rule utilitarian uses the happiness principle to pre-determine a moral framework and to apply this doctrine in an arisen situation.

Rule utilitarianism is probably the most widespread today, but I think it illustrates the downfall of utilitarianism in general. Firstly, an easy loophole for rule utilitarians is the rule that any rule can be overruled in exceptional circumstances. An overruling rule! Secondly, no one is keeping tabs and writing their creeds down (except the law, of course). This means that on the surface people appear as if they live by a set of moral codes but in practice the rules slide and the act utilitarian reigns. But then the law is a good example of when committed rule utilitarian ethics are questionable. The law is always readily altered on the count of improvement. The subjective rule!

When it comes to lying, utilitarianism is the liar’s friend. The lie to spare someone’s feelings. The white lie. The harmless lie. The lie to get ahead because everyone else does. The hero’s lie. The spy’s lie. The lie to yourself.

The greatest alternative to utilitarianism is Kantian ethics. Now, just to be clear, Immanuel Kant is one of my favourite philosophers but is also a terribly difficult read (even on Wikipedia). His treatise on ethics (Critique of Practical Reason) puts forward the idea that morality is determined by universal principles, that morality is intrinsic and therefore holds fast regardless of individual desires or interests and that an act, in order to be good, must be able to be applied to all people without contradiction. Kant calls this the Categorical Imperative, part of which also stands that we concern ourselves only with the ends of our actions and not their means. To illustrate this he hypothesised the ‘Kingdom of Ends’, something that most people are familiar with even if they don’t realise: one should act as if the principles of their actions were to be applied universally to all. A variant, essentially, of the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Kant concedes, like Mill, that not every moral act is obligatory. He draws a distinction between perfect duties (those that always hold true) and imperfect duties (those you can choose when and where to apply them, rather than be bound to always having to do so at every opportunity e.g. giving to charity). Kant is adamant that telling the truth is a perfect duty.

Do I think it’s permissible to lie? No. Not ever? No. What about if a madman threatened to kill everyone at the bus stop unless somebody told him he’s beautiful? Um, I’d probably just keep my head down…

Openness and honesty lead to the most wonderful things our relationships have to offer. A lie undermines not only the relationships we have with others but also our ability to be ourselves. Once committed to a lie, you are a slave to its world and less in power for being an agent of good.

This month's favourites:
   Sad13, Slugger
   Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
   A Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)