Kant’s chief argument is telling the truth is paramount, when speaking: “Truthfulness in statements which cannot be avoided is the formal duty of an individual...however great...the disadvantage accruing to himself or to another.” Lies, Kant claims, always hurt people, violating the duty of truth, so telling them, even to protect another, harms mankind. He gives the example of telling a murderer searching for your friend they have left, if the friend is there: you should tell the murderer the truth, because if you do not, you are responsible for the consequences. If you tell the truth, law cannot hold you accountable for the friend’s murder, but if you lie, and the friend dies, you can be considered the cause of death, because your lie lead to their death.
The principle of truth must never be abandoned, even though people abandoned it because of dangers it poses to polite society. Kant further states one must understand the danger going against the principle of truthfulness presents is not hurting someone but doing wrong. According to Kant, the statement “to tell the truth is a duty...to him who has a right to the truth” is false, because truth is not a right but a requirement. This includes the murderer hypothetical. If the
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Some forms of deception are worse than others. Generally, the wrongness of a lie is how much it hurts people. Kant says all lies hurt people, because they destroy our duty of truthfulness. This may be true, but generally lies said to protect others are acceptable, because protecting people weighs more than truth. Personally, I think some people simply do not deserve truth. Why should a stranger deserve to know my secrets? Truth may be a duty, but only to those who have the right to it. If I spoke the truth all the time, I would destroy most of my societal relationships. If truth is a duty, which according to Kant it is, then it is a duty I don’t want, because sometimes one simply must lie, to protect themselves and
Firstly, by looking at the first patient, whether she gets a kidney from her father or a “cadaver kidney” , there will be no difference because she needs a kidney nonetheless. The second patient however, cannot agree to give his kidney away because one of the main reasons is that he’s scared and lacks “the courage to make this donation”9. So right at this point, it can be seen that it would be better if the father didn’t give his kidney away because it wouldn’t cause him any happiness, whereas the daughter has two options to gIn everyday life, whether on a personal base or on a professional base, difficult scenarios, or also known as moral dilemmas, are present. Depending on whom the person is or what their belief and value systems are, the issue can be ‘resolved’. In this particular case, questions arise about whether it is morally right to lie to family members when something can be done, ignoring the fact of its after effects. The case will be explained in details later on including the patient’s state, but to answer this ethical question, two theorists will be presented for the con and pro side. For the con side, the deontologist Immanuel Kant will be presented with his theory that lying is prohibited under all circumstances, as for the pro side, John Stuart Mill will be presented for the utilitarian theory stating that whichever decision brings out the most happiness is the right decision. After discussing the case, my personal view of what is right will be stated with my own reasons, which is that lying is the right decision to be taken.
This idea is the opposite of what most of society believes. Individuals believe that lies are easier to tell than the truth. In the novel, The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, a boy named Amir witnesses his friend, Hassan, being raped, but chooses to lie and say that he was searching for the latter the whole time. ““Where were you? I looked for you,” I said. Speaking those words was like chewing on a rock” (Hosseini 83). After that event, Amir did not tell anyone about what happened. Instead, he stayed silent most of the time and spouted lies when he needed to. The lies were spoken with no effort while the truth was said to an unconscious crowd. If Amir had even the slightest care for others, he would be willing to speak up and eradicate the image others have set up for him. Furthermore, not only was Amir the self-centred one, but so was his father, Baba. His father had decided to keep an enormous secret from others, including Amir, with the exception of his best friend, Rahim Khan. The secret was how Hassan was actually Amir’s brother and Baba’s
...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.
Kant proves this by coupling it with the universal law, as one “can indeed will the lie but can not at all will a universal law to lie” (Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 15). He reasons this in an intellectual way, which leans heavily on the law of universalizability, as “by such a law there would really be no promises at all” (Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 15). He therefore reasons that this maxim “would necessarily destroy itself just as soon as it was made a universal law” (Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 15). Kant has therefore proved conclusively that lying is always wrong, but has only done so if his opinions on universal law remain
...ssailant as a means to an end. Kantianism allows a person to lie if the situation is crucial like saving a life but what if all situations just so happens to "save a life?" By following this logic, the world might as well be lying to "save a life" because it fits the second formulation even if the person lying was called out on it. People would have no proof if the person lied or not.
Kant viewed lying as a moral atrocity and there were never any reasons to lie. In fact, Kant believed “ that lying under any circumstances is “the obliteration of one’s dignity as a human being.”” (Rachels 2016 p139) The second most important was Kent’s rule is based on no exceptions. In Kent’s eye’s if we accept lying even as an exception, we then embrace it as natural law and conclude lying is okay for any and all reasons. If people accepted lying as natural law, then no one would take anyone’s word seriously, thus creating a cycle of disorder throughout society and the cycle in which society operates.
Others believe that lying is okay, but only in circumstances where it better to tell a lie to prevent the consequences of the truth. These two views are very good examples of utilitarianism and Kant’s ethical views. Utilitarianism believes that as long as the actions of a person are for the greater good, or, greatest number of greatest amount of happiness is achieved, then the action is morally right. Kant’s theory is the opposite where there are certain types of actions that are never to be permissible (lying, cheating, murder, etc.). Kant believed that the wrongness or rightness of a person’s action does not depend on the consequences but whether they fulfill our duty. A duty is defined as the action that we are obligated to perform out of respect for the moral law. The moral law is the definition of good and evil and is our inner conviction of that we ought to do good. Kantian ethics teaches that the only truly good thing in this world without needing qualification is the good
...e by the crime. Under this principle, the only morally permissible punishment according to Kant, for murder is the forfeiture of the offender’s own life. Kant himself states this:
Kant’s categorical imperative is a method of determining an action’s morality based on the action being objectively necessary, and is the first of two types of imperatives. Such an action is good in itself, not just as a means of achieving some other purpose. Because Kant believes all people poses rational will, the categorical imperative applies to everyone, guiding him or her to act in the same way regardless of his or her circumstances or bias. It disregards the consequences of an action and only judges moral or immoral based on the intentions. Such an imperative is “Do not lie,” which Kant believes is a maxim that holds true in all cases. The categorical imperative is based on the single notion that one should act only on maxims that can reasonably and without contradiction be made a universal law. As such, it does not consider the details of circumstance and holds true universally, because it relies solely on a priori concepts. I will further explain Kant’s formulations of this imperative momentarily. Now that we have just seen the first type of imperative,...
With different views on when it is OK to lie, the people continue to debate. But personally, I respect Kant’s views on the idea that lying is bad. Lying weakens the purpose to serve justice, destroys the liars’s dignity, and messes up the records. But I think that rare situations justify lies. I believe lies to save someone's life or just to protect someone from a big danger is the only type of lie that is justified. Those situations are the only times I think it is OK to lie. It might seem that lying to get yourself out of trouble is a situation that makes the lie justified. But I think that is a selfish reason for your own good and that people are thinking less about the society and more about their own good. Lying to get out of trouble is one of those many lies that are not justified.
He states that in no case should you lie (Bennett 2). What Kant focuses on is deontology, this focuses on duty-based ethics. What duty-based ethics consists of is, doing what you should do for the right reasons, your moral obligations (Bennett 2). Sometimes people will do something they know is right to do but, for the wrong reasons. Someone may save someone’s life because they know they will get money out of it while they should be doing it to save that person with or without a reward. Kant believes that lying is wrong and immoral for anyone in any case, no excuses. Kant believes in a good will (Bennett 5). He believes that happiness cannot be achieved through a bad will. A good will must consist of truthfulness, doing the right thing and doing it because you care to help. Kant believes that along with having a good will, you should be morally good. Being “morally good” has to do with following the moral law. Under any circumstance, a person should never corrupt the moral law (Bennett 2). Everyone should live their life knowing and living by this moral law, never making mistakes and always making the right decisions for the right reasons. With the scenario given, telling a small lie to a friend, Kant believes that lying is against the moral law. Bentham wanted to optimize happiness, in that case lying was the answer. Whereas, Kant says that people deserve more than that, each person deserves to know the truth and should
In an attempt to justify Kant’s argument that there is a possibility that the person who is hiding found a way out therefore lying could in fact kill the victim and telling the truth will save him we will analyze a counterpoint. What if Kant is wrong, what if the victim logically assumes that they will be safe; therefore they do not try to find a way out of the house. If the host lies and calls the police they can find the murderer and arrest him, but if the host tells the truth the murderer would come in and possibly kill both people and then leave and there would be no justice for those deaths. Or even worse, they come in and kill the victim and leave the host. Anyone would feel guilt for letting that happen, and while Kant says that there would be no blame, and that the host did what is morally right, they would not feel that way and they would blame themselves. Kant could not argue this possibility, and while he may say that there would be no blame on the person, that is not how most people would rationalize the
What I mean by this extent is telling the truth unless it is going to lead to the harm of another. I wanted to draw this line because in the reading we discussed Kant’s argument which states in short, that we are obligated to the truth in all circumstances regardless of the outcomes. Kant believes this to be true because he is looking at the means to the end, which to him is doing what is right because it is right and not for any other reasons. This led us to taking about the example of the axe murderer looking for someone he’s trying to kill and we know the undisclosed location of this person; if we followed Kant’s view then we would be obligated to tell the axe murderer the location of the person. In Kant’s perspective our morality isn’t affected by disclosing the location of the person to the murderer, but instead the morality of the murderer trying to kill the person is in question. I don’t agree with this, I believe that Kant is on the right track; however, I would take a slightly different approach to his view of morality. This being that it is morally acceptable to be dishonest as long as the reason for this dishonesty is to save or help the life of another person, because in my perspective being a moral person is to look out for the benefit of others. By looking out for others in my personal opinion you are on the right path to living a good
Secondly, it is okay to be untruthful if you are trying to protect people. In certain situations, it is safer, and more practical for you to tell a lie rather than putting a loved one in jeopardy. To illustrate you may be in a situation where you are in a serious or dangerous situation, and you do not what anyone else involved, to keep them safe. For example, if you are getting held up for ransom, would you tell the truth to a loved one and get them involved, or lie and keep them safe? The obvious answer is to keep them safe at all costs, even if it means lying. Also, you do not want to put someone in harm’s way, so it would be ...
I do not know of anyone who wants to be known as Pinocchio, the wooden boy who lies and in a result, makes his nose grow bigger. As an old proverb says, honesty is the best policy. I agree with being honest at all times. First, telling the truth to me, is always the right thing. When I catch someone in a lie, I just think to myself, what has come up of this world? A person’s truths and lies prove who that person is, and what that person is capable of. Second, people can earn a great deal of respect and trust from telling the truth. Now, people trust their “gut feeling”, but someone’s “gut feeling” should always be truthful. Respect is something that is earned, and at sometimes, given to people who do the things that they are supposed to do for themselves and for others. Last, most people were taught to tell the truth at a very young age. A truth is