Is it ever morally acceptable to lie?

Is it ever morally acceptable to lie? Although lying can be seen as a danger to civil society, it seems like there are many instances in which the most intuitive moral choice seems to be lying. In addition, if a fairly broad definition of "lying" is embraced, either because of instances of self-deception or because of the social construction of our character, it seems entirely difficult to avoid lies. Let's look at those problems more closely.

It is controversial what lying is, first of all. Four basic criteria for lying have been established by recent discussion of the subject, but none of them seems to really work.

Bearing in mind the difficulties of having an accurate description of lying, let's begin to face the most important moral issue about it: should lying always be despised?

Lying has been seen by writers like Kant as a danger to civil society. The theory goes that a society that tolerates lies is a society in which trust is eroded and, with it, the sense of collectivity.

In the United States, where lying is considered a significant ethical and legal liability, government trust could well be higher than in Italy, where lying is far more accepted. Machiavelli, among others, used the value of confidence centuries ago to focus on it. Yet, he also concluded that, in some situations, deceiving is the best alternative. How is it possible?

So-called "white lies" are a first, less contentious kind of cases in which deception is accepted. In certain situations, it seems easier to say a small lie than to make anyone stress unnecessarily, or become depressed, or lose momentum. While such actions seem difficult to support from the point of view of Kantian ethics, they offer one of the most clear-cut reasons in favor of Consequentialism.

However, popular objections to the Kantian absolute moral prohibition of deception often come from considering more dramatic scenarios. One sort of scenario is here. If you could have saved someone's life by telling a lie to some Nazi soldiers during World War II, without causing any other additional harm, it seems like you should have lied. Or, imagine the scenario in which someone is outraged, out of reach, and asks you where she can find your acquaintance to kill that acquaintance. You know where the acquaintance is and lying would help calm down your friend: should you say the truth?

There are plenty of conditions where lying appears to be morally excusable until you start thinking about it. And it is, yes, usually morally excused. There's an issue with this now, of course: who's to tell if the situation excuses you from lying?

There are many cases under which people appear to be persuaded that they are excused from taking a certain course of action when they really are not, in the eyes of their peers. The phenomenon called self-deception can be a good part of those scenarios. Lance Armstrong may have just given one of the best cases we can offer of self-deception. Yet, who is to say you're self-deceiving?

We may have led ourselves into one of the most daunting skeptical lands to navigate, by trying to determine the morality of deception.

The product of self-deception, perhaps an involuntary result, can not only be seen as lying. When we expand our understanding of what a lie could be, we come to see that our culture is deeply rooted in lies. Clothing, cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, ceremonials: many elements of our society are ways of "masking" the presence of such items. Perhaps the festival that deals best with this basic element of human life is Carnival. Therefore, before you denounce all lies, think again.