The Artful Dodge: A Reason Why Misleading Statements are morally Permissible

If someone asks, “Who is the most uncompromising western philosopher rejecting lies but at the same time good at misleading?” Obviously, my answer is: Immanuel Kant.
He is an 18th century criticism philosopher. A figure who, according to Franz Magnis Suseno–a German-Indonesian thinker, contributes to two big things: epistemology and philosophy of moral.
It is said before he wrote his magnum opuses–Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Pure Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment–Immanuel Kant has not written a word for ten years. He spent almost of his time reading.
In the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant takes “lying” as a prime example of immoral deeds. He explains that lying cannot be right in any circumstances because it violates two elemental rules set by him.
The two rules can be used as a reference to assess whether someone’s action is morally right or not.
The first rule is, “Act only on that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” By “becoming a universal law”, Kant wants to say if you do some actions, whoever the person will also choose that way and we could universalize it without contradiction.
Later, he examines whether lying could pass the first rules or not. Suppose that all people in the world lying. Does it automatically become a general truth? Kant’s answer: utterly not. Because when everyone is lying, there is a contradiction.
The contradiction is, whoever lies, they will notice that their lies will not be trusted by others. Since people do not trust each other, they will actually discourage themselves from lying.
Further explanation lets us see how contradiction happens from different angle. Consider this question: “In order to unravel the catastrophic poverty in a nation, why government does not publish and distribute the currency to the public?”
Economist assumes it will cause inflation. When everyone gets money easily–obtained for free, it will guarantee that people will not use it to any further transactions. Instead, they will use other medium. Why should I keep selling goods if I had money? The same situation will happen if everyone lying.
Another reason is that lying will corrupt the institution of honest-keeping. If you try to universalize the untruth statement, words will be meaningless. There is no difference between honesty and lies.
Kant’s second rule: “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as means, but always at the same time as an end.”
For example, so many people engaging friendship relation for profit deliberation. What kind of advantage do I get from him or her? For Kant, this kind of relation is morally wrong since a friend is only used as a means to gain other goals.
The same can be seen in lies. When someone is lying, he is using others’ ignorance to achieve some purposes. That’s why lies fails become universal principle; it is violates human rights.
Next, I will discuss the way Kant uses misleading statement instead of committed lying.
Michael J. Sandel said philosophers are not always the best authorities on how to apply their theories in practice although it seems that it does not happen to Kant.
Once upon a time, He found himself in trouble with Prussian royal authority under the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm II. The king and his censors well thought-out Kant’s writings on religion discrediting to Christianity. I guess one of them is Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason.
What should be concerned is that Immanuel Kant was a philosopher who lived in renaissance period. It implies that his thoughts was shaped and influenced by the surroundings; the time when reason gets its role after was conquered for so long by the dogma.
The king and his censors demanded that Immanuel Kant promise to renounce from any further statements on the topic. Facing the king, Kant responded with a carefully worded statement. He said:
“As your majesty’s faithful subject, I shall in the future completely desist from all public lectures or papers concerning religion.”
It seems he was aware when he made the speech; the king was not likely to live much longer. A few years later, when the king passed away, Kant considered himself absolved of the promise.
Kant claimed his promise was done as the death of the king since his statement assigned only to Friedrich Wilhelm II.
Soon after, Kant explained the reason why he is doing that. According to him, he must be careful so that he should not be deprived of his freedom without lying to Friedrich Wilhelm II.
Kant worries if he lies, it will violate the moral principle he gives to himself. By this brainy dodge, the old man from Konigsberg succeeded in misleading the king and his censors without lying to them.
Michael J. Sandel–the man who tells the story, offers us certain enlightenment. According to him, there is fundamental difference between lying and misleading.
As we seen in the previous paragraphs, lying cannot be morally right because when everyone in the world doing it, there will be contradiction. “The same cannot be said of misleading statements” Sandel wrote.
Since if everyone trying to universalize the misleading statements, there is no contradiction here, instead people will learn to listen with awareness; like a lawyer who untangles misleading statements to see whether the statements is literally meaning like that or have any other purposes.
The point is misleading statements does not using the listener’s ignorance in the same way as an outright lie. “It’s always possible that a careful listener could figure it out of what really happens” Sandel said.
