21 Truthfulness
What can
PROBLEM
Now that we have examined questions relating
to health, we turn to one of the most important
areas of the personal life, interpersonal
communication. We take care of our health
precisely so that we can live in meaningful
relationships with others and enjoy the values
surrounding our relationships. Among those
values is truthfulness. All of us claim respect for
our own personhood as conscious rational
subjects and must show similar respect for our
neighbor’s personhood by putting right order in
the communications between our own minds and
feelings of others. Whoever speaks is expected
to speak truthfully, but we can still ask whether
we are always obliged to speak truthfully. Is
truth-telling an absolute value in any and every
circumstance?
When we think truthfulness, we usually
think first of all about intellectual honesty and
almost never give a thought to emotional
sincerity, which is another name for emotional
honesty. We are very sensitive to the virtues and
vices of the mind; we admire a truthful person
and are repelled by a liar. Lying is despicable,
shameful, and immoral; nit is intellectual
dishonesty, intellectual insincerity. Our
emotional life has its parallel to this, for we can
express emotions we do not feel and deceive
others about the emotions we actually do feel.
We can lie not only about the truth we know but
about the emotion we have as well.
The problem of truth-telling arises from
the fact that a person may also have a right or a
duty to conceal the truth about what he or she
thinks or feels. Each of us has a right to privacy.
We may be entrusted with a secret that must not
be divulged. There might not be much trouble on
this pointif people did not have the habit of
asking questions, but then the privilege of
inquiring goes with the gift of speech.
we do when questioned point blank on a matter
we must keep secret? How can we veil our
speech to guard the truth as well as to
communicate it? Does a physician, for example,
have a duty to tell the patient the whole truth and
nothing but the truth? Are there occasions when
the substance of our humanity is too frail to bear
the full burden of the truth? Certainly our social
world cannot endure without the truth and yet if
the absolute truth were always to prevail in
human affairs, we could not endure it. We need
to explain:
1. What is lie?
2. Are all deceptions lies?
3. Why and how far is lying wrong?
4. Why must secrets be kept?
5. How can secrets be kept without
lying?
MEANING OF ALIE
What is a lie? The literal-minded person may
define a lie as any statement not in strict literal
accord with actual facts. But no one with the
faintest spark of imagination or the most
primitive inkling of courtesy could confine his
or her speech within such narrow bounds.
Speech not only exchanges information but also
contributes to the amenities of life. Candor has
its place, but the outspoken telling of the
unvarnished truth on every occasion would lose
us all our friends and make us unfit for society.
Speech need not always be used thus, and this
literal-minded definition would require a
distinction between lies that are allowable and
those that are not, between so-called white lies
and black lies. A better procedure is to reserve
the word lie for the misuse of speech that is
morally wrong and to define it accordingly. To
distinguish it from the loosed usages of everyday
speech, we may call it a strict or formal lie. We
are concerned with it alone.
 Commenting on St. Augustine’s
definition of a lie as “a false statement uttered
with the intent to deceive,” St. Thomas says that
it contains three things:
1. The falsity of the statement. This
provide the material for a lie for it is not
a lie to say what is actually false while
thinking it true, though it is a lie to say
something is actually true while
knowing it to be false.
2. The will to tell the falsity. The essential
element of a lie as a human act is the
willful disconformity between one’s
thought and one’s speech, so that it is
“speech contrary to one’s mind.”
3. The intention to deceive. This is the
usual motive to lying and indicates its
normal effect on the one lied to. The
intent need not be efficacious, as when a
liar knows that he or she will not be
believed.
Some add a fourth that a lie must be:
4. Told to one who has a right to the truth.
If this addition is properly understood, it
will make the explanation of lying much
simpler and clearer. It should not mean
that we can say anything and everything
we want to a person merely because that
particular person has no strict right to
demand the truth of us. It must be
presumed that anyone to whom we
speak has the right to be spoken to
truthfully if we speak to him or her
seriously on any matter at all. Respect
for the person as a person requires that
we speak truthfully. Someone loses this
right only when we have the greater
right to withhold the truth and cannot do
so by silence. In this case, speech must
be used to conceal rather than reveal the
truth, and what we are really
communicating to the person is the fact
that we are not communicating. Such a
person should be able to take the hint
that he or she is not being lied to but is
being put off.
The person has the right to the
truth about what we think may also have
a right to know the truth about what
emotions we feel. If it is to this person’s
advantage or to someone else’s
advantage that he or she know what I
feel, if it makes a real difference to his
person or to another, then to express an
emotion I do not feel and/or to conceal
emotions I actually do feel is a failure to
be honest. To express an emotion I do
not feel is, in this context, emotional
insincerity, a kind of emotional
untruthfulness, to fail to express what I
actually do feel is, in this same context,
a suppression of the truth, an act of
dissimulation. To express love for a
person when I do not feel it is one of the
most cruel forms of emotional
insincerity, just as it is equally insincere
to conceal my true feelings from
someone to whom the knowledge would
make a real difference. Other examples
of this kind of dishonesty are pretending
to like things or persons we do not like
or pretending to feel sympathy or joy
for a person when we do not. Just as a
person who habitually trifles with the
truth tends to lose the ability to
distinguish between truth and falsity, so
a person who habitually cheats others
about his or her emotions soon becomes
unable to know what he or she really
feels. The end result is not only
deception of others but self-deception as
well. When we tamper with the sincerity
of our emotional life we destroy our
own inner integrity, we become unreal
for ourselves and for others, and we lose
the ability to know what we actually feel.
 The problem comes down to the
nature of speech as a medium of
communication and its function in
human society. For a strict lie there must
be an indication, at least in the
circumstances, that:
1. Serious communication is going on.
2. It is meant to be taken as true.
3. It is being accepted by the hearer as
true.
4. Yet it is known by the speaker to be
false.
Conventionality of Speech
It is natural for us to speak, but apart from a few
obvious gestures and imitative sounds, there is
no natural language. The so called natural
languages are merely those that were never
consciously invented but grew up historically.
Language is conventional; the symbols used
being developed by human artifice and dictated
by custom. Hardly any word has a single
univocal meaning whenever used, like the
symbols of mathematics. Language is a peculiar
mixture of logic and tradition, in which the
conventions are undergoing subtle but continual
change. By convention we distinguish fact and
fiction, literal and figurative expressions, jokes,
and serious statements, emotional outbursts and
sober information, ironical allusions and
scientific data, polite compliments and solemn
testimony. Often nothing but circumstances
indicates the difference.
1. Communication is not limited to
words but is any sign used to convey
thought. Looks, gestures, nods,
winks, shrugs, facial expressions,
tones of voice, and even the
circumstances in which something is
said are all signs capable of telling
another of what we think and, if
used for this purpose, are
communication. Lying is possible
by any of these means.
2. The sign must be intended by the
speaker to convey a meaning.
Involuntary looks and gestures are
not communication. It is not always
lying to conceal our emotions under
outward calm nor appear cheerful
when we are sad, but only when we
are intentionally using our
appearance to express our real
feelings.
3. The sign must be made to another
person for communication is
between personal selves. It is
impossible to lie to oneself, nor
would it be lying to confide untruths
to one’s dog. Talk in other people’s
presence, when it is clearly not
directed to them, is not
communication to them.
Eavesdroppers listen at their own
peril.
4. The sign must be such as to express
the speaker’s own judgment, what
he or she believes to be true. To lie,
therefore, the speaker must express
as true something thought to be
untrue, or as certain something not
known for a certain. If I mistakenly
think that what I say is true, though
in fact it is not, I do not lie; my
speech is untrue but not untruthful.
5. Fiction is not lying for the story is
used as an expression of one’s
creative imagination and
entertaining ability, not of one’s
factual judgment. Jokes and
exaggerations are not lies if there is
any circumstance to indicate that
they are not to be taken seriously.
6. Figures of speech are not lies. When
a word has several meanings, its
sense in this particular statement
must be judged by the content and
meaning of the whole statement by
 the total figuratively, and the
figurative meaning can just as
genuine as the literal.
7. Many polite expressions and
stereotype formulas have lost old
meanings and acquired new ones
through convention. “Not guilty in a
law court is a legal plea by which
the accused does not confess but
demands that the case be proved.
“Good morning,” “goodbye,” “how
do you do,” “see you later” once
meant something but is now mere
forms of greeting and parting. How
far one can go in the use of polite
excuses depends on convention.
“Not at home,” “in conference”,
“occupied,” “too busy,” “previous
engagement” are recognized as
urbane ways of putting one off,
depending on the circumstances.
Once these probably were lies, but
use has softened their import.
8. Circumstances can be such that,
though words are used, there is no
formal speech because no
communication is intended nor
should it be expected. A captured
soldier, for instance may regale his
captor with tall stories about the
disposition of his own troops. Even
if they are foolish enough to believe
him, he is not lying because
circumstances show that he is
entertaining and not communicating.
The case is different if a prisoner is
put on parole and seriously accepts
the conditions.
Lying and Deception
Deception is the usual motive for lying,
but we must not confuse these two concepts.
Feints, disguises, impersonations, fictitious
names, and other such pretenses are deceptions
but not lies. The difference is in the lack of
communication in the sense just explained.
Deception is not wrong in itself but can become
wrong from motives and circumstances if
intended or foreseen as a cause of harm. The
wrong comes not from the act done which is
indifferent, but from the consequences the harm
that follows.
Most games are built on harmless
deception. Even harmful deception may be
permitted in the protection or vindication of
one’s rights, according to the principle of double
effect. Thus stratagems and military maneuvers
in war may be designed deliberately to mislead
the enemy. Such deceptions are not lies because
nothing is said no judgment is expressed, no
statement is made by the usual symbols of
communication. Actions are done, it is true, but
if the enemy takes a meaning out of them, he
does do at his own peril. The intent to deceive
may be justified on the grounds that one is
defending one’s own rights and merely
permitting the enemy to harm himself. Some
even classify the presentation of forged
passports and other documents to elude an unjust
government as deceptions but not lies, because
circumstances show that they are not
communications but only an external
compliance with demands the officials have no
right to make.
Hugo Grotius correctly distinguishes
between lies and stratagems, but his application
is poor; he classes among stratagems among
some actions that really are lies: to tell a
falsehood to do someone a service, to use false
intelligence to encourage troops, and his
probation of Plato’s “noble lie” told for the
public welfare. These are not stratagems, actions
capable of a deceptive interpretation, but lies. A
free hand cannot be given to one of the worst
forms of lying yet invented, mass propaganda of
militant nationalism.
ARGUMENTS ON LYING
We have shaved down a lie to the
minimum because people use speech
loosely and give it other social functions
besides that of communicating thought.
These remain an irreducible residue:
speech meant and taken in all
seriousness as communication from
person to person. The hearer trusts the
speaker and has a right to be told the
truth if he or she is told anything. Hence
lying in the sense defined and explained
which we have called strict or formal lie
as a morally evil act. St. Thomas’s
argument cites Aristotle and St.
Augustine.
As words are naturally signs of
intellectual acts, it is unnatural and
undue for anyone to signify by
words something that is not in his
mind. Hence the Philosopher says
that lying is in itself evil and to be
shunned, while truthfulness is good
and worthy of praise. Therefore
every lie is a sin, as also Augustine
declares.
The first of the following arguments is
an expansion of St. Thomas’s argument,
and the other two are additions to it.
1. Argument from the abuse of a
natural ability. It is natural to
intelligent beings to have
some means of
communicating their thoughts
to win assent from others. To
communicate as thought what
is not thought, to convey
seriously to another as true
what one knows to be untrue,
is to abuse this means of
communication and to render
it unfit for its purpose. Hence
lying is an act against our
nature and violation of the
natural law.
2. Argument from our social
nature. Human society is
built on mutual trust and faith
among people. If lying were
morally allowed, we could
never tell when a person is
lying and when not, whether
the next statement will be a lie
or the truth; we could not
even accept a person’s
assurance that the statement
he or she is now making is the
truth. Such speech would
cease to have any meaning for
us, and if this practice became
widespread, there would be an
end to human communication
and thus to human society.
3. Argument from the dignity of
the human by being fed
falsehood instead of truth
under the assurance that it is
truth. This is precisely what
the liar does. By subjecting
another’s intelligence to a lie
for the liar’s own advantage,
he or she degrades the person
of a fellow human being and
in so doing degrades his or
her own person.
No moralist advocates
lying as a normal practice or
thinks that we may play fast
and loose with the truth as we
please, but some, and not only
relativists, object to the
rigidity and absoluteness of
the arguments just given.
There are occasions, they
think, when lying is allowed
and perhaps even required.
1. Words are a means to an end
and have no sacredness in
themselves. They may be used
 for communicating or for
withholding the truth. There is
no reason why one should be a
natural use and the other an
unnatural abuse. We use other
abilities for purposes not
directly intended by nature, as
when an acrobat stands on her
hands, without considering it
an abuse. Why should speech
be treated differently?
2. Everyone recognizes the social
value of speech and the need
for trust among people. But the
good for society may
sometimes be promoted more
by a lie than by the truth, for
instance, to save an innocent
person’s life or to avert war.
Kant thought that if I were
hiding a friend from a pursuing
murderer, I could not save him
by telling the lie that he is not
here. Such idolatry of principle
would be more antisocial than
social. It would destroy the
fugitive’s trust in men, and
even the pursuer, while
accepting my betrayal, would
despise me for it.
3. A person should be morally
allowed to lie, not arbitrarily,
but only in limited social
situations. The person would
be using the lie for protection,
and the greater the lie the more
extreme would have to be the
peril to justify it. The rest of us
can usually recognize when
someone is cornered and can
make due allowances for the
truth value of his or her speech.
We actually do so anyway, yet
the social value of
communication is not thereby
destroyed.
4. If self-defense allows us to go
so far as to kill an attacker,
why may we not save
ourselves at much less cost by
telling a lie when lying would
get us out of the situation?
Why should physical force be
an allowable means of self-
defense and the spoken word
an immoral one? To let
someone be deceived is a far
less evil than to kill him or her.
5. In self-defense the means of
self-defense are to be
proportioned to the means of
attack. If we may repel force
by force, why should we repel
a lie with a lie? Force cannot
defend against speech, it is
true, but speech can defend
against speech. One who
slanders my good name can be
deterred by knowing that he
or she will receive the same
treatment from me.
6. The difference between lie
another kinds of deception is
that a lie uses the common
symbols of communication
called speech, whereas other
forms of deception use actions
capable misinterpretation.
Why make so much of this
difference? Why not consider
a lie as any other stratagem,
and treat it on the same terms?
There is a value to some of these
objections. Others have already been
considered in determining the factors necessary
for a lie to be a lie in the strict sense.
1. Many prefer not to use the
argument from the abuse of a
natural ability, not as denying that
such abilities can be abused, but as
questioning how we decide what
uses are unnatural abuses since
many things in nature have several
alternative uses. Standing on one’s
hands does not make them unfit for
their normal use, but to drive nails
by punching them in with one’s
bare fist would soon do so. The boy
in the fable who cried “Wolf” so
ruined his speech that he could no
longer communicate when it
became necessary. Does such a
result come from a lie or two, or
from the reputation of being a
habitual liar?
2. The telling of a lie seems a small
price to pay for saving life or averting
war. But where does one stop? Murder
or any other crime could be done for
similar reasons. Not the size of the evil
but the kind is what counts. Moral evil
may not be done to avert even the
greatest of physical evils. All this makes
sense only if the lie is really a lie in the
full meaning of the term. Murdered
have no right to know where their
intended victim is, and nothing said to
them has the character of
communication. This is not an example
of a real lie, and there is no need to
follow Kant’s rigid interpretation of
duty.
3. The same answer is applicable to a
person in extreme difficulty. We do
not expect literal truth from such a
person because we know that he or
she is not communicating. The case
is different when this person is put
under oath in court, for then what
he or she says is taken seriously by
those who have a right to know,
unless the court itself is corrupt and
vehicle of injustice a fact to be
proved and not presumed.
4. One may summon all one’s powers
to aid in defense against an unjust
attack, but one must not misuse
these powers so that they become
evil means to a good end. We
should certainly defend ourselves
by speech rather than by killing, if
the speech can be morally justified
in any legitimate way, but not if it is
a real lie in the strict and formal
sense previously discussed. Physical
force can be a moral or immoral
means of self-defense, depending
on how it is used, and so can
speech. A strict lie is an immoral
means by definition. If in the most
such cases the adversary would not
have a right to the truth, what is
said would not be a strict lie.
5. We have here a different case from
the preceding. It is not a case of
warding off physical attack by
speech rather than by force, but of
trading off lie for lie. To answer a lie
by telling another lie is returning
evil for evil and not repelling of the
first evil. A lie against me is a wrong
use of speech, which is telling the
truth.
6. The value of our examination into
the factors that make up a lie in the
strict sense here becomes apparent.
Speech may often be used as a
means of deception, as we have
seen partly and will see more
clearly. Feints, stratagems, and
 other forms of deception may not
be used indiscriminately, and
neither may speech. A lie in the
strict sense is always an immoral
use of speech and is just any form
of deception.
TRUTHFULNESS IN THE DOCTOR-PATIENT
RELATIONSHIP
Does the physician have the duty to tell
his or her patient the truth and nothing but the
truth in any and all circumstances? The patient
obviously has a right to know the physician’s
diagnosis of his or her case. Is the right to know
absolute, that is, unqualified, in any sense?
Today we are concerned that each patient has
the ultimate decision as to the care and medical
treatment to be given. Only an informed
consent will suffice. If the patient does not have
sufficient information, including knowledge of
the viable alternatives available for choice, how
can such a person make an informed decision?
On the other hand, the physician has agreed to
care for and treat the patient so as to heal,
restore to health, a person who asked for help
in the first place. An attitude of trust on the part
of the patient is essential if the healing process
is to begin. Competence on the part of the
physician usually must be presumed on the part
of the patient; and this competence is
guaranteed by the government in licensing the
physician to practice.
Traditionally, the judgment of the
physician has been held paramount in the area
of truth telling and the early oaths and codes of
medical practice are all silent on what
physicians should tell patients. The general
principle that seems to emerge from our
tradition is that the main concern of the
physician and the others attending the sick is to
maintain the good spirits of the sick person. If
telling the whole, unvarnished truth will harm
the patient, then the tradition would sanction
withholding the truth or even bending it.
Clearly the tradition is paternalistic and
needs further nuancing for the contemporary
physician. No casuistic solution can be advanced
here to govern all cases. The personal dignity of
the patient must be upheld by the physician, for
the patient always has the right to know the
seriousness of his or her condition to the extent
that this knowledge is required for the patient’s
decisive response. The physician has a duty to
reveal the gravity of the patient’s ability to cope
with it and in accord with the time left for the
patient to deal with this knowledge. The
greatest insult to the patient’s intelligence is to
lie to the patient. Most patients desire to be
hold frankly but gently about their condition as
they approach death. Unless the patient
indicates clearly, either explicitly or implicitly,
that he or she does not want the whole truth,
the physician ought to inform the patient
gradually but fully as a way of befriending the
patient and helping him or her search for the
ultimate truth of his or her life. For the
physician to indulge in deception is to destroy
the mutual respect and trust, that may well be
the physician’s most valuable therapeutic asset.
SECRETS
If our speech is such that it is serious
communication, what we say must be true, but
there are times when we may and times when
we must refuse to speak. We must reveal the
truth when the other party has a right to it.
Such would be a lawful superior, a judge in
court, or a party to a contract. We must not
reveal the truth when it is a strict secret. A
secret is knowledge that the possessor has the
right or the duty to conceal. For want of a
better term we shall call a truth that one has a
duty to conceal a strict secret. A person may be
obliged to keep a secret because:
 1. The knowledge of its very nature is
private
2. He or she has promised not to reveal it
The first is a natural secret, because the
matter it deals with is private. What belongs to
a person’s private life, to the closed circle of the
family, to the status of business firms and
corporations, to military and diplomatic affairs
of governments, cannot be aired in public
without injury to the parties concerned. Those
who share in such matters are bound to keep
them secret. Others who happen to find out
about them are also bound to keep them secret,
but not to the jeopardy of their own rightful
interests.
The second comprises secrets of
promise, when one already has the knowledge
and then promises not to divulge it; and secrets
of trust, when the knowledge is confided to one
only under the condition, expressed or implied,
that the matter is confidential and not to be
revealed. Both of these may also be natural
secrets and/or not, depending on the nature of
the matter. Professional secrets are typical
examples of secrets of trust and are usually
natural secrets also. A secret of trust is the
strictest kind of secret and binds in justice,
because it is based on a contract expressed or
implied.
That we are at times permitted to
conceal the truth should be evident from our
nature. Besides being a member of society,
each of us is also an individual. I have not only
social and public relations but also private and
personal affairs of my own. I have a right to my
own personal dignity and independence, to
freedom from meddling and prying into my
private affairs.
Furthermore, we are at times obliged to
conceal the truth. One of the purposes of
speech and of human society itself is that we
can get help from our fellow human beings that
we can get advice from our friends and consult
experts without danger of making private affairs
public, that when we organize with others for
the pursuit of a common goal, we can exchange
information without fear of betrayal to a hostile
group. One of the main purposes of speech
would be lost unless we can also control how
far the knowledge we communicate will spread.
How far does the duty of keeping a
secret extend? This question concerns the
conflict of rights when the right of one party to
have a certain matter kept secret conflicts with
the difficulties the other party experiences in
trying to keep the secret. In general, one is no
longer bound to secrecy:
1. If the matter has otherwise been
divulged
2. If the other party’s consent can rightly
be supposed
The first of these conditions is evident,
since the secret no longer exists, but the second
needs some explanation. One may be expressly
released from the obligation of secrecy and
then is no longer bound. Even if this release is
not expressly given, conditions may be such
that it can be reasonably be presumed, for no
one has the right expect a person to keep a
rather ordinary secret at the expense of his or
her life. The laws excuses from duty, as
previously explained apply to natural secrets of
promise one is no longer held to keep the
secret when doing so would cause
disproportionate hardship. However, one who
has expressly promised to keep the secret even
under grave or extreme hardship must keep the
promise, unless it went morally wrong to have
made such a promise. Greater reasons are
required to release one from a secret of trust,
but even such a strict secret may cease to bind
if the holding of the secret would cause serious
damage, not merely hardship, to the parties
concerned, to a third party, or to the
community. Sometimes however, the revealing
of a secret, such as a military secret, would
cause such damage to the community that it
must be guarded even at the expense of one’s
life. What means can one use to keep a secret
when directly questioned about it? The
following four are customarily noted:
1. Silence. The normal way treat an
impertinent question is to refuse to
answer. A courteous statement that
one is not free to talk of such matters
usually ends the subject. Persistent
pryers are not put off, however, and
silence is often interpreted as consent.
2. Evasion. The use of evasion distracts
the questioner without giving the
information he or she wants, by
changing the conversation, answering a
question with a question, passing it off
as a joke, or assuming an injured air.
Evasion requires more ready with than
some people can command.
3. Equivocation. By the use of double-
meaning expressions the speaker are
capable of another meaning that is false;
if the incautious hearer takes the wrong
meaning, that is not the speaker’s
problem. Thus a man may speak of his
child without saying whether it is his
child by birth or adoption; the hearer
who assumes one rather than the other
is making a hasty judgment. For
equivocation to be legitimate, both
meanings must be discoverable by the
hearer, even though one meaning is
much more obvious.
4. Mental reservation. Mental reservation
is the limiting of the obvious sense of
words to some particular meaning
intended by the speaker. It is the truth
but not the whole truth. Part of the
truth is reserved in the speaker’s mind,
lending a possibly deceptive coloring to
the part that is expressed. For mental
reservation to be legitimate, some
outward clue to the limited meaning
must be objectively present, though the
speaker hopes that it will not be noticed
by the listener. The clue may be nothing
else but circumstances in which the
words are said. A doctor is asked
whether his patient has a certain
disease and answers, “I don’t know,”
meaning, “I don’t know, secret apart
and in my nonprofessional capacity.” He
may even answer, “No,” meaning, “No,
not insofar as I can tell you.” The very
fact of his profession is sufficient clue to
the meaning, for the questioner ought
to know that the doctor cannot speak in
his or her professional capacity. Thus
this example can be taken as mental
reservation but is better interpreted as
an instance of no communication.
May a person use evasions,
equivocations, and mental reservations at any
time and for any reason? No. They are not lies
and not wrong in themselves, but an act can
become wrong by its motive or its
circumstances. An unrestricted use of these
means of concealment would have ruinous
social effects and would break down mutual
trust among people. It is not the normal mode
of speech, and we cannot be constantly
combing over every sentence uttered to us to
find possible hidden meanings. We expect our
neighbor to speak to us with candor and
sincerity, and we take his or her words in their simply by the fact that speech is not being used
obvious sense in the ordinary transactions of in its function of serious communication.
life. These combinations of speech and
nonspeech are to be used only as a refuge to CONCLUSION
guard a secret from prying questioners who By nature we are social beings, and the ability
have no right to the information they seek. to speak is perhaps the chief means by which
With this motive and in these circumstances our social life is carried on. Like all other gifts,
they are morally allowable. speech may be used or abused. Thus
Finally, in circumstances in which the truthfulness is good and lying is wrong.
questioner not only has no right to the Speech can be abused in two ways: by
information but would use it to do evil and the seriously communicating as true what one
necessary concealment can be accomplished by knows to be untrue or by revealing truths one
neither equivocation nor mental reservation, has no right to reveal. We are never allowed to
what is morally allowable? We must avoid do the former, since the hearer has a right to
cooperating in evil and so cannot, take a chance the truth. We would have no difficulty about
of giving the questioner some outward clue to the latter were it not for other people’s prying
the information. Given the duty to maintain the minds and impertinent questions; against them
secret, the further duty to avoid cooperation in we have right to protect ourselves, a right that
evil, and the fact that the questioner has no often becomes a duty when other people are
right to the information, we may tell the involved. I such a difficult situation we are
questioner anything that sounds reasonable. In allowed sometimes obliged, to summon all our
this way we succeed in deceiving the questioner ingenuity to extricate ourselves from the
and so deflecting him or her from doing evil difficulty and to guard the trust others have
without telling a strict lie. placed in us. Apart from such situations,
The world we live in is an imperfect one. sincerity and candor should rule our speech.
Duplicity and deceit are a real part of that world
and cannot be wiped out altogether. At the
same time, we know that personal integrity
demands truthfulness from each of us and that
trust and integrity are precious values and are
difficult to regain once they have been
squandered. Only on the basis of respect for
truthfulness can trust and integrity flourish in
society. For this reason we have insisted that
concealment he kept at a minimum and that in
the use of mental reservation there be some
outward clue to the meaning objectively
present.
Legitimate as these subterfuges may be,
they should not be overstressed. Most cases of
allowable verbal deception can be explained