Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [63]
This seems a strange and extreme position. Surely we don’t have a moral duty to tell a Nazi storm trooper that Anne Frank and her family are hiding in the attic. It would seem that Kant’s insistence on telling the truth to the murderer at the door either misapplies the categorical imperative or proves its folly.
Implausible though Kant’s claim may seem, I would like to offer a certain defense of it. Although my defense differs from the one that Kant offers, it is nonetheless in the spirit of his philosophy, and, I hope, sheds some light on it.
Imagine yourself in the predicament with a friend hiding in the closet and the murderer at the door. Of course you don’t want to help the murderer carry out his evil plan. That is a given. You don’t want to say anything that will lead the murderer to your friend. The question is, what do you say? You have two choices. You could tell an outright lie: “No, she’s not here.” Or you could offer a true but misleading statement: “An hour ago, I saw her down the road, at the grocery store.”
From Kant’s point of view, the second strategy is morally permissible, but the first is not. You might consider this caviling. What, morally speaking, is the difference between a technically true but misleading statement and an outright lie? In both cases, you are hoping to mislead the murderer into believing that your friend is not hiding in the house.
Kant believes a great deal is at stake in the distinction. Consider “white lies,” the small untruths we sometimes tell out of politeness, to avoid hurt feelings. Suppose a friend presents you with a gift. You open the box and find a hideous tie, something you would never wear. What do you say? You might say, “It’s beautiful!” This would be a white lie. Or you might say, “You shouldn’t have!” Or, “I’ve never seen a tie like this. Thank you.” Like the white lie, these statements might give your friend the false impression that you like the tie. But they would nonetheless be true.
Kant would reject the white lie, because it makes an exception to the moral law on consequentialist grounds. Sparing someone’s feelings is an admirable end, but it must be pursued in a way that is consistent with the categorical imperative, which requires that we be willing to universalize the principle on which we act. If we can carve out exceptions whenever we think our ends are sufficiently compelling, then the categorical character of the moral law unravels. The true but misleading statement, by contrast, does not threaten the categorical imperative in the same way. In fact, Kant once invoked this distinction when faced with a dilemma of his own.
Would Kant have defended Bill Clinton?
A few years before his exchange with Constant, Kant found himself in trouble with King Friedrich Wilhelm II. The king and his censors considered Kant’s writings on religion disparaging to Christianity, and demanded that he pledge to refrain from any further pronouncements on the topic. Kant responded with a carefully worded statement: “As your Majesty’s faithful subject, I shall in the future completely desist from all public lectures or papers concerning religion.”42
Kant was aware, when he made his statement, that the king was not likely to live much longer. When the king died a few years later, Kant considered himself absolved of the promise, which bound him only “as your Majesty’s faithful subject.” Kant later explained that he had chosen his words “most carefully, so that I should not be deprived of my freedom… forever, but only so long as His Majesty was alive.”43 By this clever evasion, the paragon of Prussian probity succeeded in misleading the censors without lying to them.
Hairsplitting? Perhaps. But something of moral significance does seem to be at stake in the distinction between a bald-faced lie and an artful