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Kant: Truth and Duty

    In his short essay On a Supposed Right to Lie because of Philanthropic Concerns, Immanuel Kant asserts that it is never permissible to lie, even in the most dire circumstances: “Truthfulness in statements that cannot be avoided is the formal duty of man to everyone, however great the disadvantage that may arise therefrom for him or any other.” From this statement it can be seen that Kant has inextricably linked the concept of truth with the concept of duty, which he outlines in his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. In the following pages, I will examine the relationship between truth and duty in Kant's works and attempt to answer some of the more obvious questions that arise concerning these aspects of Kant's moral theory.

    The first and most obvious question that comes to mind is this: for Kant, where does our duty to tell the truth come from? Here it will be expedient to examine briefly Kant's concept of duty, which provides the foundation for his entire moral theory– for Kant, an action can only have moral worth if it is done for the sake of duty. Kant defines duty as “the necessity of an action done out of respect for the law... an action done from duty must altogether exclude the influence of inclination.”The latter part of this statements reflects Kant's belief that not only must an action be in accord with duty for it to be a true moral action, but it must be done for the sake of duty. Any selfish motive or any kind of inclination whatever towards the action on any other grounds, whether for good or for evil, would be enough to negate the moral worth of that action. For Kant, only adherence to universal law as such can give our actions a genuine moral value; concern for any particular end is irrelevant and does not have any bearing on the morality of the action. This principle gives rise to what Kant calls the categorical imperative: “I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law.”

    For example, we have a duty to help those less fortunate than ourselves. Suppose, then, that I give money to the poor for the sake of getting a tax deduction, or perhaps I do it simply because I am a naturally sympathetic person who takes pleasure in helping others. In both cases the action is in accord with duty– my duty is to help the poor, and whatever my motivations, I have done it– yet according to Kant neither action has any true moral significance because I did not act purely for the sake of duty. Here Kant is not suggesting that only the cold and emotionless person who has nothing to gain in a particular situation is capable of doing a truly moral action; in fact, we may indeed take pleasure in helping the poor and we may even get a tax break out of it. But for Kant these are merely accidental consequences of our action and must never constitute any part of our motive for doing it in the first place; in his own words: “The moral worth [of an action] depends, therefore, not on the realization of the object of the action, but merely on the principle of volition according to which, without regard to any objects of the faculty of desire, the action has been done.”

    Now that we have discussed Kant's conception of duty (albeit by no means exhaustively), we will return to our original question: from whence comes our duty to tell the truth? The most basic answer Kant gives is that since human society is founded on contracts and mutual trust, every lie undermines the basis of society and therefore harms humanity in general, and as such we have a duty to tell the truth at all times. He uses the categorical imperative to prove his point: by lying, we want everyone to accept what we say as true, when in fact it is not. We do not, by the same token, will that the maxim by which we lie be universalized, because this would result in our being lied to as well; no one would trust each other, and society would collapse. Kant very rightly observes that when we violate duty, we are far from willing that our maxim should become a universal law– we are actually willing that the opposite of our maxim should hold true universally, exception being made only for ourselves. By lying, I am not willing that everyone else lie to me, but rather that everyone should believe my lie and tell the truth themselves. Kant's postulation here is really quite brilliant: that by my very transgressions of universal law, I am actually confirming the existence of such a law.

    However, if we examine Kant's ideas more closely, we can see that the categorical imperative seems to be inherently flawed according to Kant's own principles. According to Kant, neither the consequences of an action nor the end for which it is done have any bearing on the morality of that action. But by applying the categorical imperative to a particular action, are we not taking into account ends and consequences when trying to determine whether we could universalize the maxim by which we are about to act? If I determine that it is my duty to tell the truth, for the reason that I cannot universalize my maxim of lying because it would mean my being lied to myself, is this not merely thinly disguised self-interest, which Kant himself says cannot be the basis for any sound moral theory? Apparently, the categorical imperative will need to be refined if it is to be a reliable litmus test for the morality of a particular action, and if this is the case, then Kant has not really answered the question of where our duty to tell the truth comes from.

    Perhaps now we should consider another question: to whom do we owe our duty to tell the truth? Kant's occasion for writing On a Supposed Right to Lie because of Philanthropic Concerns was in reply to criticism of his works by the French philosopher Benjamin Constant. Kant had asserted that it was not even permissible to lie to a murderer who was trying to kill a friend hiding in your house, telling him that the friend was not there. Constant disagreed, and gave the following argument: “It is a duty to tell the truth. The concept of duty is inseparable from the concept of right. A duty is what in one man corresponds to the right of another. Where there are no rights, there are no duties. To tell the truth is thus a duty, but is a duty only with regard to one who has a right to the truth. But no one has a right to the truth that harms others.”

    Kant's reply is curious; he seems to infer that when Constant says certain people have a “right to the truth” while other's don't, he is arguing that we determine objective truth by an act of will, which doesn't seem to be what Constant is trying to get at here. It is as though Kant was unable to meet Constant's argument head-on and decided to skirt the issue by making Constant's words appear to mean something else entirely. Kant later says that the nature of truth is such that it cannot be granted to one person and denied to another, but that “truthfulness in statements that cannot be avoided is the formal duty of man to everyone...” But if this is the case then on what basis is Kant making this assertion? He doesn't really back up his thesis; he only postulates that every lie harms human society because it “vitiates the very source of right.” This is the very same argument that we encountered earlier when trying to establish the grounds for a supposed duty to tell the truth in every circumstance. We have already determined that this theory doesn't hold water according to Kant's own moral principles because it is based on an application of the fundamentally flawed categorical imperative, which, as we have seen, is nothing more than glorified self-interest. And, as Kant himself says, such selfish inclinations cannot provide the basis for a sound moral theory because they are not capable of being universalized.

    Kant seems to be reasoning in circles, and he has still not provided convincing evidence for his assertions that we have a duty to tell the truth unconditionally, and that we owe this duty to every man, irrespective of any supposed “right to the truth” (or lack thereof) in any particular circumstance. These are compelling theses, and Kant might have been able to back them up with a compelling argument if he had made his case for the universal duty to tell the truth to every man based on the nature of Truth itself and the inherent dignity of Man, rather than on circular arguments and flawed reasoning.