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Authors: Alexander McCall Smith
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heights.”
She had stopped him and asked him what he meant. If he would not have fallen, then had he deliberately jumped? Paul had shaken his head. “I doubt it. People surprise you, but I just cannot see why he would have done that. I spent hours with him earlier that day, hours, and he was not in the least bit down. Quite the opposite, in fact; one of the companies which he had drawn to our attention, and in which we had invested heavily, had come up with a spectacular set of interim results. The chairman had sent him a memo congratulating him on his perspicacity and he was very pleased with this. Smiling. Cat with the cream. Why would he do himself in?”
Paul had shaken his head, and then had changed the subject, leaving her to wonder. And now she was wondering again, as she went downstairs for breakfast. Grace had arrived early and had put on her egg to boil. There were comments on a story in the newspapers; a government minister had been evasive in parliamentary question time and had refused to give the information which the opposition had requested. Grace had put him down as a liar the first time she saw his photograph in the paper, and nowhere was the proof. She looked at her employer, challenging her to deny the proposition, but Isabel just nodded.
“Shocking,” she said. “I can’t remember when exactly it was that it became all right to lie in public life. Can you remember?”
Grace could. “President Nixon started it. He lied and lied. And then it came across the Atlantic and our people started to lie too. That’s how it started. Now it’s standard practise.”
Isabel had to agree. People had lost their moral compass, it seemed, and this was just a further example. Grace, of course, would never lie. She was completely honest, in small things and big, and Isabel trusted her implicitly. But then Grace was not a politician, and never could be one. The first lies, Isabel assumed, had to be told at the candidate selection board.
Of course, not all lies were wrong, which was another respect, Isabel thought, in which Kant was mistaken. One of the most ridiculous things that he had ever said was that there was a duty to tell the truth to the murderer looking for his victim. If the murderer came to one’s door and asked,
Is he in?
one would be obliged to answer truthfully, even if this would lead to the death of an innocent person. Such nonsense; and she could remember the precise offending passage:
Truthfulness in statements which cannot be avoided is the formal duty of an individual to everyone, however great may be the disadvantage accruing to himself or to another.
It was not surprising that Benjamin Constant should have been offended by this, although Kant responded—unconvincingly—and tried to point out that the murderer might be apprehended before he acted on the knowledge which he had gained from a truthful answer.
The answer, surely, is that lying
in general
is wrong, but that some lies, carefully identified as the exception, will be permissible. There were, therefore, good lies and bad lies, with good liesbeing uttered for a benevolent reason (to protect the feeling of another, for example). If somebody asked one’s opinion of a newly acquired—but tasteless—possession, for instance, and one gave an honest answer, then that could hurt feelings and deprive the other of the joy of ownership. So one lied, and praised it, which was surely the right thing to do. Or was it? Perhaps it was not as simple as that. If one became accustomed to lying in such circumstances, the line between truth and falsehood could become blurred.
Isabel thought that she might visit this issue in detail one day and write a paper on the subject. “In Praise of Hypocrisy” might be a suitable title, and the article might begin: “To call a person a hypocrite is usually to allege a moral failing. But is hypocrisy inevitably bad? Some hypocrites deserve greater consideration …”
There were further possibilities.
She had stopped him and asked him what he meant. If he would not have fallen, then had he deliberately jumped? Paul had shaken his head. “I doubt it. People surprise you, but I just cannot see why he would have done that. I spent hours with him earlier that day, hours, and he was not in the least bit down. Quite the opposite, in fact; one of the companies which he had drawn to our attention, and in which we had invested heavily, had come up with a spectacular set of interim results. The chairman had sent him a memo congratulating him on his perspicacity and he was very pleased with this. Smiling. Cat with the cream. Why would he do himself in?”
Paul had shaken his head, and then had changed the subject, leaving her to wonder. And now she was wondering again, as she went downstairs for breakfast. Grace had arrived early and had put on her egg to boil. There were comments on a story in the newspapers; a government minister had been evasive in parliamentary question time and had refused to give the information which the opposition had requested. Grace had put him down as a liar the first time she saw his photograph in the paper, and nowhere was the proof. She looked at her employer, challenging her to deny the proposition, but Isabel just nodded.
“Shocking,” she said. “I can’t remember when exactly it was that it became all right to lie in public life. Can you remember?”
Grace could. “President Nixon started it. He lied and lied. And then it came across the Atlantic and our people started to lie too. That’s how it started. Now it’s standard practise.”
Isabel had to agree. People had lost their moral compass, it seemed, and this was just a further example. Grace, of course, would never lie. She was completely honest, in small things and big, and Isabel trusted her implicitly. But then Grace was not a politician, and never could be one. The first lies, Isabel assumed, had to be told at the candidate selection board.
Of course, not all lies were wrong, which was another respect, Isabel thought, in which Kant was mistaken. One of the most ridiculous things that he had ever said was that there was a duty to tell the truth to the murderer looking for his victim. If the murderer came to one’s door and asked,
Is he in?
one would be obliged to answer truthfully, even if this would lead to the death of an innocent person. Such nonsense; and she could remember the precise offending passage:
Truthfulness in statements which cannot be avoided is the formal duty of an individual to everyone, however great may be the disadvantage accruing to himself or to another.
It was not surprising that Benjamin Constant should have been offended by this, although Kant responded—unconvincingly—and tried to point out that the murderer might be apprehended before he acted on the knowledge which he had gained from a truthful answer.
The answer, surely, is that lying
in general
is wrong, but that some lies, carefully identified as the exception, will be permissible. There were, therefore, good lies and bad lies, with good liesbeing uttered for a benevolent reason (to protect the feeling of another, for example). If somebody asked one’s opinion of a newly acquired—but tasteless—possession, for instance, and one gave an honest answer, then that could hurt feelings and deprive the other of the joy of ownership. So one lied, and praised it, which was surely the right thing to do. Or was it? Perhaps it was not as simple as that. If one became accustomed to lying in such circumstances, the line between truth and falsehood could become blurred.
Isabel thought that she might visit this issue in detail one day and write a paper on the subject. “In Praise of Hypocrisy” might be a suitable title, and the article might begin: “To call a person a hypocrite is usually to allege a moral failing. But is hypocrisy inevitably bad? Some hypocrites deserve greater consideration …”
There were further possibilities.
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