Philosophy for Us
Part Two · How Should I Live? · Series 18

Honesty, Tact & Self-Deception

Did I spare her, or did I just spare myself?

8 episodes ↓ 27 sources ↓ EthicsMind

The question

She's standing in the kitchen doorway with two mugs going cold behind her, and she asks me straight: was I right to leave him? And I have her whole face in front of me — she's already decided, she did it three weeks ago, the lease is signed, there's no taking it back. And here's the thing I'm not proud of. In the half-second before I answer, I'm not actually thinking about her. I'm running the math on me. If I say what I really think — that I never understood why she stayed or why she went, that from the outside it looked like she ran the same fight twice and called the second one freedom — that costs me. It costs me the next hour, the tears, her thinking I was against her the whole time. So I hear myself say it: Yeah. Yeah, you did the right thing. Warm, certain, no hesitation. And she exhales, and I feel like a good friend. Then later the other thought lands: did I just spare her, or did I just spare myself? Was that kindness — or the cheapest way to keep her liking me, dressed up as kindness so I'd never have to notice the difference? I told her a comforting thing. But the bigger lie, the one I'm only catching now, may be the one I told myself about why.

What you practise

People deserve the truth, and you shouldn't wound someone for nothing. Most of us hold both, and feel the clash in the half-second before we answer. You learn to slow that half-second down: to tell honesty from tact, and a lie from a true sentence that misleads. You learn to hear the costume in your reasons — "I'm just being honest" over the pleasure of saying it, "I didn't want to hurt them" over the hour you'd rather not sit through. And looking harder won't settle it: the one looking has a stake. No rule for the white lie arrives. The next call is yours, with your eyes open.

The episodes

Each episode builds on the one before, and the finale hands the question back to you sharper, not settled.

  1. 01

    Does this look okay?

    A sister, three weeks out of a ten-year marriage, asks whether she was right to leave — and the true answer and the kind answer come apart. The first episode slows down that half-second, and notices the second question hiding behind it — whether the kindness was for her, or for the person delivering it.

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  2. 02

    The murderer at the door, and the kindest lie

    The murderer at the door. Kant holds that a lie is always wrong, even the kind one that saves a life, and Christine Korsgaard's reading tries to rescue his best idea from his own answer; the consequentialist replies that the brutal truth often buys an hour of pain that changes nothing. Both are built at full strength, and the deadlock leaves a suspicion — the dispute may sit at too shallow a level.

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  3. 03

    Your word, and the long way round

    T. M. Scanlon's What We Owe to Each Other (1998) locates the wrong of a lie in the trust between people — could the deception be justified to the person deceived? The harder case follows — it is possible to deceive someone completely while keeping every sentence true, so misleading with the literal truth may be no cleaner than lying.

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  4. 04

    You're not too honest. You're not tactful — or are you?

    Christian Miller argues that the person who wounds with the truth is not too honest but short on tact, a different virtue — while Aristotle insists there really is an excess of truthfulness. Neither account settles the question the episode uncovers — whether your reason for telling, or for holding back, is itself honest.

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  5. 05

    The lie under the lie

    A father reads his retirement writing down the phone, and the praise that follows is a kindness — or a relief with kindness written over it. The series turns inward — "I'm just being honest" and "I didn't want to hurt them" as flattering stories about one's own motive, and the discovery that neither has ever been checked.

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  6. 06

    Honest, or just harsh?

    Brad Blanton's Radical Honesty — stop concealing, drop the politeness — is credited with what it gets right about habitual withholding, and Sartre's account of bad faith supplies the trap — a sincerity performed in the very act of claiming it. The satisfaction of being the one brave truth-teller at the table turns out to be part of what needs examining.

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  7. 07

    Kind, or just avoiding it — and can you tell?

    The kind story — she couldn't handle it right now — and the question of whether a motive can be checked at all. Donald Davidson, David Pears, Alfred Mele and Herbert Fingarette give rival accounts of self-deception — a partitioned mind, a motivated bias, a refusal to spell things out — and on each of them the tool you would check with is the one that is compromised.

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  8. 08

    To them, or to you?

    The final episode returns to the kitchen and declines to give a rule for the white lie or a test for sincerity — there is none to give. The question of how much truth you owe the people you love remains real and unsolved; beside it stands the sharper one the series uncovered — the lie you most need to stop telling — is it to them, or to you?

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Thinkers

The thinkers and traditions this series draws on:

Immanuel KantT.M. ScanlonJennifer SaulChristian MillerAristotleJean-Paul SartreLionel TrillingAlfred Mele

Related series

Your turn

Your mother is dying. She has a few weeks, and she knows it. One afternoon in the hospital she takes your hand and asks: "Did we do all right by you, your father and I?" They didn't, not really. Nobody was cruel, but the house was cold, and it took you years to get over it. Nothing you say now can be acted on. There is nothing left to repair, and nothing to protect except the next ten minutes.

You could say "You did your best." It's true, and she would hear it as yes.

  1. Is "You did your best" a lie? Every word is true, and she dies believing something false. Does keeping the words true change what you owe her?
  2. If you gave her the plain answer, would you be too truthful, or honest and short on tact? Is there a true thing she could bear to hear?
  3. Which reason would you give yourself: "she's dying, why hurt her", or "she asked, and I've waited thirty years"? What would each one protect, and how would you know?

A good answer does two jobs without letting one swallow the other: it says what she is owed in that room, and it names which of your two reasons you would reach for. It has to grant, too, that reaching for it settles nothing — a clean motive is what anyone finds who goes looking.

Sources

Written by AI under human direction. This is the reading the series was built from. checked against source means the passage was found in the cited work and a second, independent model checked the episode's use of it; supports in part means that check judged the use a little stronger than the passage alone establishes; passage located means a reader found the passage but it has not had the second check. Unmarked entries are background reading.

Where to start