Kant's View On Lying

Although Immanuel Kant believes truth should be always be told despite the circumstances, is it really in the best interest of the patient in a medical setting? Physicians have a duty to the patient to take care of their wellbeing and that is why they take the Hippocratic Oath. Sometimes you have to be wishy washy with the truth, but only when it is in the interest of the patient and it depends case by case. Bad news can cause a patient to feel hopeless, fearful, and depressive which may cause other problems in any procedure. Kant also argues that confidentiality gives the patient autonomy and self-determination. Full disclosure would help the patient understand the severity of the case and thus, make better decisions in regards to their health.

Kant argues that mere conformity with the moral law is not sufficient for moral goodness. I will argue that Kant is right. In this essay I will explain why Kant distinguishes between conforming with the moral law and acting for the sake of the moral law, and what that distinction means to Kant, before arguing why Kant was right.

Firstly, by looking at the first patient, whether she gets a kidney from her father or a “cadaver kidney” , there will be no difference because she needs a kidney nonetheless. The second patient however, cannot agree to give his kidney away because one of the main reasons is that he’s scared and lacks “the courage to make this donation”9. So right at this point, it can be seen that it would be better if the father didn’t give his kidney away because it wouldn’t cause him any happiness, whereas the daughter has two options to gIn everyday life, whether on a personal base or on a professional base, difficult scenarios, or also known as moral dilemmas, are present. Depending on whom the person is or what their belief and value systems are,

Even though some people discount fiction as a sources of learning and think it is just for entertainment sake there is still much to learn from it. Fiction being written by the author will have his or her knowledge mixed into it. Learning from someone else’s prospective will help you solidify what you believe, either by backing it up or challenging it and making your values stronger in the process. In “Telling the Truth in Lies” Virginia Stem Owens says, “Fiction brings us a certain kind of news about the world we can get in no other way, because all other ways are abstract and detached, while fiction’s way is particular.” Fiction can teach the reader to believe and hope for a happy outcome or to protect themselves so they are not hurt by what

Honesty; a responsibility crowned upon each person. In any circumstances, lying is never necessary nor acceptable. There are many pieces of evidence to support this claim in the articles “Rejecting All Lies: Immanuel Kant” by Sissela Bok and “Brad Blanton: Honestly, Tell the Truth” by Barbara Ballinger. Unlike honesty, lying harms one’s worth and mental state.

It is commendable that he never backed down from the belief that lying is never acceptable, even to prevent a murder. He defended himself by stating moral actions are not measured by their consequences and if a person lied to a murderer, he or she is now denying the murderer the freedom to rationalize his own actions and perhaps decide not to kill his intended victim. Kant feels that by lying to the murderer the murderer becomes just a means to an end instead of being treated like an end as well. He has essentially been stripped of free will in that situation which goes against everything Kant believes to be

It is important to understand what Kant means when claiming that it is morally wrong to use another person merely as a means to your end when making the decision whether or not

It is important to understand what Kant means when claiming that it is morally wrong to use another person merely as a means to your end when making the decision whether or not

Savulescu’s argument also has some flaws in regards to his responses to a few possible objections he talked about. One objection that Savulescu responds to is the objection that genes are pleiotropic meaning they have different effects on different parts of the body (The Ethical Life, 454). The example given was that a gene that prompts depression might also be responsible for heightened creativity and productivity (The Ethical Life, 454). Savulescu 's response to that was that we would have to “limit interventions until our knowledge grows” and we would have to do more“adequate research” before expanding the types of interventions (The Ethical Life, 454). The problem with that is that it requires experimenting and testing on children and embryos which would be treating them as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Kant would agree and say that these children “exist as an end in itself, not merely as a means to be used by this or that will at its discretion” (Kant, 96). Savulescu is suggesting research on children and embryos in order to reach the goal of allowing genetic enhancement. He is using them as a means to his end result. This is a major flaw as Kant would argue that treating people as an end is showing them the respect they deserve while treating them as a means is just dealing with them so that they can help to achieve the person’s goal (Shafer-Landau, 174). Therefore, a child should never be treated as a means to an end to help reach a goal for either

If we were to lie, we can never guarentee that our actions will bring a good result, but in fact could bring about a worser result. Kant believed lying was commiting an unnessasary evil. That acts are only right when they are performed with our moral duty to not lie. Lying is morally wrong, it impedes on my ability to make free rational choices, and also lying robs others of their freedom to make their own rational choices. Lying leads others

Kant explains time-and-again; consequences can never be part of the decision that something is right or wrong. Why? Kant argues that responsibility for being moral is possible only if we know with absolute certainty what is right and what is wrong. Consequences never give us that certainty. So, consequences never have any part in any moral judgment.

At the beginning of the text, Kant quotes a passage from writer, Benjamin Constant, who disputes that consequences would befall those who unconditionally tell the truth because the moral principal requires you to do so. Constant continues his argument by using an example of rebuffing the notion to lie to a murderer about a friend being hidden in the house. He drives his point home when he talks about telling the truth is a duty, but the truth is only for those who have the right, not those who want to inflict harm. Basically, what Constant is trying to say is you can withhold information and lie, if any form of harm will come to other individuals.

The third sentence from the exegetical passage or Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense is; “ Just as the musical sound appears as a figures in the sand, so the mysterious ‘X’ of the thing-in-itself appears first as a nervous stimulus, then as an image, and finally as an articulated sound” (144). Nietzsche believes that it is absolutely impossible to know everything about any given object. He explains this through the relationship between stimuli, image, and sound. When we see something, such as a tree the first sphere is perception which is when we see the object, sphere two is thinking which is when we create an image of the object in our head through thinking’s, finally sphere three is language and communication which is when we finally realize what the object is in front of us and

What are lies? A lie is defined as follows: To make a statement that one knows to be false, especially with the intent to deceive. There are several ways that lies are told for instance, there are white lies, lies of omission, bold faced lies, and lies of exaggeration. No matter what type of lie that one chooses to tell many people believe that lies do more harm than good.

If a person is hiding several Jews in his/her home at the time of World War II and Nazis knock on the door and asks if he/she is sheltering Jews. In this situation, the government officials are the Nazis and if one follows Kantian ethics, he/she is obligated to tell the truth which would result in the death of several Jews.