Pre-Term Seminar

The Lies We Tell:
The Philosophy and Politics of Lying and Deception

One of the first moral rules children learn is that it is wrong to lie, and yet many people treat the rule against lying as allowing a variety of exceptions. What exactly is a lie and what makes lying morally objectionable? Is a life of total honesty an ideal to which we should aspire and what are we to make of cases in which deception seems the only way to prevent unjust harm being done to ourselves and others? Politics is notoriously rife with lies and while political lies are often self-serving, it can plausibly be claimed that some lies are necessary to achieve important political goals. If so, does that mean that those lies are morally justified or should we conclude that one cannot be both a good politician and a good person? We will examine these and other questions in light of a selection of classic and contemporary philosophical and political reflections.

Places in this seminar are limited; for more information please contact Peter Wicks.

Readings
Montaigne, “Of Liars”
Augustine, Enchiridion (selections)
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, Q.109-110
Immanuel Kant, “On a Supposed Right to Lie From Philanthropy”
Harry Frankfurt, “On Truth, Lies, and Bullshit”
Robert Bolt, Preface to A Man For All Seasons
William Ian Miller, “Deceit in War and Trade”
Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Live Not By Lies”

Schedule
12.30-1.30 LUNCH
1.30-3.00 Classic philosophical treatments of lying
3.00-3.15 BREAK
3.15-4.30 Lies and other forms of deception
4.30-4.45 BREAK
4.45-6.00 Lying in politics
6.00-7.30 DINNER

A man who lies, thinking it is the truth, is an honest man, and a man who tells the truth, believing it to be a lie, is a liar.

William Safire, Before the Fall