Philosophy 191 at Syracuse University
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There is a line of argument that goes rather like this: We romance at its best only if it is built upon foundation of trust; and we can have foundation of trust only if there is complete honesty. From this it is somehow supposed to follow that all truths should be uttered. Or, in any case, a much weaker thesis is held, namely that all questions should be answered truthfully. This is truth as a god and that, I believe, is a fundamental mistake. Truth is a social lubricant; and when it is manifestly clear that truth is having the very opposite effect, then that should give us pause. To go on about the importance of truth notwithstanding the irrevocable damange that it is doing is to have a fetish about telling the truth. And there is nothing whatsoever virtuous about that. I would not have thought truth more valuable than life itself. We make exceptions with regard to life. So it is unfathomable to me that there should be no exceptions to telling the truth.
Now, I think it rather significant that I went from the strong thesis that
Romantic couples should utter all truths to one another
to the substantially weaker thesis that
All questions should be answered truthfully
The difference here is enormous. Can you imagine “Hi honey, I was talking to Adrian who, as it happens, is more physically attractive than you are”? To the best of my knowledge, making an utterance such as this is tantamount to courting sheer disaster a romantic relationship; for part of what makes each partner secure in the love of the other is the reality that other sees her or his beloved as having a constellation of attractiveness that no amount of excellence along a single dimension can possibly equal. Telling a beloved that someone else is more beautiful is the equivalent of calling that constellation of attractiveness into question. This is so although, of course, it most certainly is true that someone is more physically attractive or more intelligent. And so on.
To utter to one’s spouse that Adrian, say, is more attractive is to privilege the physical features of another, which is precisely what should not be done. At any rate, the utterance has the effect of doing this, whatever one’s intentions may be. And part of the reason for this is just the fact that one volunteered the information. For in doing so, one has already indicated that the person’s physical attractiveness is some of importance to one. And there is no way to prevent the slide from the other’s physical attractiveness having some importance to its having too much importance, given that one volunteered the information.
The question that I put to my Philosophy 191 class was the following:
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Suppose that Shlomo-Abulah asks his male friends whether they have ever lusted after his incredibly beautiful wife, Angelica. Should they answer that they have if, indeed, they have? Similarly, if the wife of each friend asks her husband whether he has lusted after Shlomo-Abulah’s incredibly beautiful wife, should he answer that he has if, indeed, he has? It is understood that none of the friends would ever, ever have sexual relations with Angelica.
My answer was quite simple: In either case, absolutely not.
In a word, there is something woefully problematic about validating that we have had a sexual interest in another besides our beloved. For to validate that interest is to give it a reality in the eyes of the beloved that was not there before. This is so notwithstanding the fact that we all understand the erotic aspect of physical beauty.
Yet, recognizing all too well that one’s spouse might feel a twinge of eroticism when the smoking hot individual walks by is light years away from having one’s mere intellectual grasp of human reality validated by one’s spouse. For we have moved from a recognition on one’s part regarding a human reality to an actual acknowledgment on the part of one’s spouse this reality has played itself in our or his life.
The mere thought that one’s spouse might have had a lustful thought about So-and-So can easily enough be put out of mind or held in perspective. The acknowledgment on the part of one’s spouse that she or he has had such a thought takes it out of the realm of one’s mere reflections on a possibility and turns it into an unalterable reality. And that, needless to say, is no small difference.
Mutatis mutandis, the same thing holds with regard to Shlomo-Abdulah’s question to his friend’s. If he knows that his wife is incredibly beautiful, then probably understands that any number of people have had a lustful thought about her, their best intentions notwithstanding. But an acknowledgement to that effect from each friends transforms matters from a speculative thought in one’s own mind about people in general to a concrete reality about this and friend’s behavior. And concrete reality about their behavior will never go back into the box of mere speculation. This is why, in so many cases, acts of infidelity are to marriage what rust is to iron—a corrosive that cannot be stopped.
A lustful thought, of course, is no act of infidelity. But the acknowledgment of a lustful thought to one’s beloved is explicit validation that one has a found another sexually interesting. And there ain’t nothing at all trivial about that.
These remarks show the fallacy of reasoning according to which there is no difference at all between, on the one hand, a truth of humanity that a person has to know, if she or he has any sense at all and, on the other, an explicit and concrete instantiation of that truth by way of a person’s behavior in space and time. Despite their best efforts, a human being can find herself or himself riveted by the erotic beauty of another. This is a simple reality. What is forgotten is that the instantiation of that reality in one’s own person is itself yet another reality.
The usual objection to prevarication has to do with the fact that lying is self-serving. But lying need not be self-serving at all. We can in fact lie to preserve an extraordinary good in life—indeed, an extraordinary good in another’s life.
In the case of the example that I gave to my class, the lie preserves the sanctity of marriage that we have when two lives are eternally committed to one another. Passing moments of lust that may or may not reflect human frailty should not at all be given any more of a life, and validation, than they had. To share that one has had such moments, in the name of telling the truth, is to do more harm than good by putting the flesh of intentionality upon the mere bones of reality.
