Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [65]
The difference, I think, is this: A carefully crafted evasion pays homage to the duty of truth-telling in a way that an outright lie does not. Anyone who goes to the bother of concocting a misleading but technically true statement when a simple lie would do expresses, however obliquely, respect for the moral law.
A misleading truth includes two motives, not one. If I simply lie to the murderer, I act out of one motive—to protect my friend from harm. If I tell the murderer that I recently saw my friend at the grocery store, I act out of two motives—to protect my friend and at the same time to uphold the duty to tell the truth. In both cases, I am pursuing an admirable goal, that of protecting my friend. But only in the second case do I pursue this goal in a way that accords with the motive of duty.
Some might object that, like a lie, a technically true but misleading statement could not be universalized without contradiction. But consider the difference: If everyone lied when faced with a murderer at the door or an embarrassing sex scandal, then no one would believe such statements, and they wouldn’t work. The same cannot be said of misleading truths. If everyone who found himself in a dangerous or embarrassing situation resorted to carefully crafted evasions, people would not necessarily cease to believe them. Instead, people would learn to listen like lawyers and parse such statements with an eye to their literal meaning. This is exactly what happened when the press and the public became familiar with Clinton’s carefully worded denials.
Kant’s point is not that this state of affairs, in which people parse politicians’ denials for their literal meaning, is somehow better than one in which nobody believes politicians at all. That would be a consequentialist argument. Kant’s point is rather that a misleading statement that is nonetheless true does not coerce or manipulate the listener in the same way as an outright lie. It’s always possible that a careful listener could figure it out.
So there is reason to conclude that, on Kant’s moral theory, true but misleading statements—to a murderer at the door, the Prussian censors, or the special prosecutor—are morally permissible in a way that bald-faced lies are not. You may think that I’ve worked too hard to save Kant from an implausible position. Kant’s claim that it’s wrong to lie to the murderer at the door may not ultimately be defensible. But the distinction between an outright lie and a misleading truth helps illustrate Kant’s moral theory. And it brings out a surprising similarity between Bill Clinton and the austere moralist from Konigsberg.
Kant and justice
Unlike Aristotle, Bentham, and Mill, Kant wrote no major work of political theory, only some essays. And yet, the account of morality and freedom that emerges from his ethical writings carries powerful implications for justice. Although Kant does not work out the implications in detail, the political theory he favors rejects utilitarianism in favor of a theory of justice based on a social contract.
First, Kant rejects utilitarianism, not only as a basis for personal morality but also as a basis for law. As he sees it, a just constitution aims at harmonizing each individual’s freedom with that of everyone else. It has nothing to do with maximizing utility, which “must on no account interfere” with the determination of basic rights. Since people “have different views on the empirical end of happiness and what it consists of,” utility can’t be the basis of justice and rights. Why not? Because resting rights on utility would require the society to affirm or endorse one conception of happiness over others. To base the constitution on one particular conception of happiness (such as that of the majority) would impose on some the values of others; it would fail to respect the right of each person to pursue his or her own ends. “No one can compel me to be happy in accordance with his conception of the welfare of others,” Kant writes, “for each may seek his