The Moral Permissibility of Lying

The Moral Permissibility of Lying

Missing Works Cited

The question of what constitutes morality is often asked by philosophers. One might wonder why morality is so important, or why many of us trouble ourselves over determining which actions are moral actions. Mill has given an account of the driving force behind our questionings of morality. He calls this driving force “Conscience,” and from this “mass of feeling which must be broken through in order to do what violates our standard of right,” we have derived our concept of morality (Mill 496). Some people may practice moral thought more often than others, and some people may give no thought to morality at all. However, morality is nevertheless a possibility of human nature, and a very important one. We each have our standards of right and wrong, and through the reasoning of individuals, these standards have helped to govern and shape human interactions to what it is today. No other beings except “rational beings,” as Kant calls us, are able to support this higher capability of reason; therefore, it is important for us to consider cases in which this capability is threatened. Such a case is lying. At first, it seems that lying should not be morally permissible, but the moral theories of Kant and Mill have answered both yes and no on this issue. Furthermore, it is difficult to decide which moral theory provides a better approach to this issue. In this paper, we will first walk through the principles of each moral theory, and then we will consider an example that will explore the strengths and weaknesses of each theory.

Lying is simply an act of not telling the truth, and this definition of lying will be used in future sections of this paper. There are three groups of lies t...

... middle of paper ...

...f utilitarian calculus might indicate that there is something wrong with utilitarianism, since a morally correct action can sometimes go against our conscience, and Mill has called conscience the foundation of morality. This is interesting, because it raises the question of whether we will ever have a moral theory that works in all cases. I believe that human nature is too complex for any consistent moral theory to be written down on a few pages. Perhaps a philosopher might come to do that someday. However for now, questions of morality such as whether lying is permissible should be answered by Kant’s moral theory. In cases where Kantianism cannot supply an answer, likely there is no other moral theory that can. Some questions, under some circumstances, must sometimes remain unanswerable—whether for the greatest good or happiness, or because of our respect for duty.