Revista Filosofía UIS

Vol. 22 No. 1 (2023): January - June
Articles

Can We Lie to the Murderer in Front of the Door? An Analysis of Kantian Philosophy on Lying

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Leonardo González-Valderrama
Universidad Externado de Colombia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18273/revfil.v22n1-2023003

Published 2023-01-02

Keywords

  • Kant,
  • moral rigorism,
  • Truthfulness,
  • necessary lie,
  • duty to oneself

How to Cite

González-Valderrama, L. (2023). Can We Lie to the Murderer in Front of the Door? An Analysis of Kantian Philosophy on Lying. Revista Filosofía UIS, 22(1), 55–74. https://doi.org/10.18273/revfil.v22n1-2023003

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Abstract

Kantian moral philosophy has been criticized for its commitment to moral rigorism. This criticism is based on the Kantian position on lying, specifically, it derives from Kant’s assertion that it is a duty to be truthful even to the murderer who comes home asking for the whereabouts of the refugee friend. This article is explanatory in spirit and aims to reconstruct and examine Kant’s position on lying to determine whether the rigorist critic is well founded. I examine three sources: Lectures on Ethics (§1.1), “On an Alleged Right to Lie for Philanthropy” (§1.2) and Metaphysics of Morals (§1.3). From this comparative examination I conclude that there is no textual evidence to prove that Kant categorically defends the duty to be truthful in the case of the murderer at the door; so that the accusation of rigorism against Kantian moral philosophy, at least as far as this case is concerned, does not seem to be well founded.

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