The categorical imperative and the Nazi at the door

[sylvar]

Jodi was explaining to me this evening that ethicists find fault in Kant's categorical imperative, the first formulation of which is (if I'm paraphrasing correctly) that you should act in a way in which you can will everyone else to act. The problem, they say, is that Kant forbids lying because nobody really wants to live in a world in which

Comments

[tacit]

Heh. Funny you should mention this; I've had this exact conversation, with this exact hypothetical scenario, on a mailing list about six years ago.

There's an old saying whose source I do not know that says "the Devil's work has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all." This betrays a very common idea about lying: that when a person lies, he does so in the service of an evil end, for example to enrich himself or to evade responsibility. The objection to lying is actually predicated on this idea; it's an objection, once removed, to doing such things as enriching one's self at the expense of another, or evading responsibility, or removing informed consent from another, or whatever.

But the lie itself is not really the thing; it's the objective of the lie that matters. A lie can be made in the pursuit of a noble cause, such as to prevent genocide; far from an attempt to dodge responsibility, in the particular case of the Nazis, i submit that the lie is the action of greatest courage, because the consequence to the liar is potentially the greatest. Telling the truth in this case makes one a hero of the state; the lie makes one the enemy of the state, and in Nazi Germany, perceived enemies of the state tended to meet a very sticky end indeed.

In most cases where a person must choose between a lie and the truth, one can usually tell which is the morally more defensible course of action by moving in the direction of greatest courage. If one has broken a lamp, stolen money from the church coffers, or impregnated the boss's daughter, the lie is the direction away from greatest courage; it is an attempt to evade responsibility for and the consequences of one's actions. If one is hiding a family of Jews from the Gestapo, the lie is unquestionably the direction of greatest courage.