Morality of Lying

Trying to determine what makes up morality has been a topic that philosophers have been concerned with for quite some time. As humans, we constantly beat ourselves over the head (some more than others) when it comes to figuring out what constitutes a moral action. Each person has their own ideas of what is right or wrong, and over the years, human reasoning has shaped these sometimes diverse ideas to what they are today. We are the only life form on this planet that possess this ability to intellectually reason with one another, and we must protect this ability from anything that could hinder it. Lying is one of those things that hinders our ability to properly reason with one another. At first, it seems that lying should not be morally permissible, but the moral theories of Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill have answered both yes and no on this issue. It is difficult to decide which moral theory provides a better approach to this issue, but through analyzing both theories I have came up with a hypothesis that I would like to test. I believe that if the morality of lying is brought into question, Kant’s theory is the best theory to use.

In this paper, I will define lying as simply not telling the truth. There are three types of lies that I want to explain. A person can lie without saying anything at all, such as when a police officer comes to interview that person and, having witnessed a robbery, that person says nothing. Silence is not giving the truth, so by remaining quiet, that person is lying. A more recognizable form of lying is outright lying, such as when somebody claims that they did not commit the robbery, when in fact they did. Deception is yet another form of lying, because by tricking another person into believing something false, one is withholding the truth from that person. By withholding the truth, the truth is not being told, so the deceiver must be a liar. Regardless of the form in which a lie is being presented, all lies have one thing in common. By giving others false thoughts or perceptions of an event, lies can have a strong influence on our free thinking. Therefore, they are all violations of human reason. The ability to reason is also considered valuable to both Mill and Kant, since it underlies both of their moral theories.

I will first analyze Mill’s theory of Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism judges actions consequentially. Given several choices, a utilitarian would pick the morally correct choice by using the Greatest Happiness Principle1. By looking at whether the consequences of an action will produce the greater happiness for the greater number of people than another action would, one can conclude that this action is the morally correct action to take1. This theory rides on the Greatest Happiness Principle, and it is this principle that I will use to see if lying could be considered morally correct.

Most people think of lies as bad actions, so they must produce less happiness than telling