here seems to be a most interesting correlation between suffering and excuses, namely that those who have suffered seem to hold the view that either they can do no wrong or, in any case, the wrong that they do is absolutely inexcusable.  One sees this with feminists; one sees this with blacks, one sees this with gays.  Indeed, blacks go so far as to make the extraordinary claim that they cannot be racist.  That, of course, is a rather silly view.  If a black can be an Uncle Tom, and all sorts of blacks agree to that, then surely a black can be a racist. 

One of the most striking forms of self-defense is known to flow from what is called the battered wife syndrome.  Suppose that a woman has been battered by her husband for years.  Well, one day he hits her and then goes to sleep.  The wife, in turn, pulls out a gun and shoots him to death or she hits him over the head with a frying pan until he dies.  In these circumstances, it has been argued with some success that what we have here is a case of self-defense.  To be sure, it is not the “classical” case of self-defense where one kills another in order to free from oneself from the very life-threatening attack that the person is making against one.  The battered wife syndrome is seen as an extension of this “classical” case.  She wasn’t being threatened at that very point in time when she killed her husband, but her life had been so threatened and demoralized all these many years, that this small detail is irrelevant. I shall say more about this momentarily.  For the matter is instructive.

Folks who do not embrace homosexuality have been called among other things Nazis.  I understand that Nazis were ideologically opposed to homosexuality.  Just so, it is simply false that all those who have some difficulties with homosexuality are even close to being Nazis.  But never mind this truth.  There is the thrill of invoking this excoriating label.  One has been a victim and one is entitled to do whatever pleases one in order to advance one’s cause.

The moral prize of victimhood, if you will, is that it excuses behavior that would otherwise be utterly inexcusable morally. 

At the heart of the idea of suffering excuses behavior is the idea of justified moral outrage. 

Now, I take moral outrage to be a serious and appropriate moral phenomenon.  If you have wronged me in a particularly horrible way, expressing moral outrage towards you would be quite appropriate.  I may with great justification want you to grasp just how much you have damaged me.  Make no mistake about it, people sometimes need clarity as to the damage that they have done. 

Alas, what moral outrage does not justify in any way is my hurting you.  And merely harming another does not, whatever else it may do, bring about clarity to the harm that one has suffered. 

In this regard, the battered wife syndrome is rather unlike the suffering of gays or blacks.  The two cases would be more analogous if there were indeed this one non-black or non-gay who did all or most of the wrong in question, which is what we have with the battered wife.  She is rightly seen as having an on-going fear of a single man who has inordinate power over her.  The husband is, in a very straightforward sense of the word, guilty.  This may excuse her killing him, but it does not excuse her killing other men.

So the battered wife syndrome is not a moral friend of those who use their suffering as an excuse for the wrong they do.  For they seem to think that they may randomly be hostile and derisive to individuals—individuals who are in fact innocent.  Admittedly, people can be mistaken about their innocence.  But that is uninteresting, since people can also be mistaken about who is not innocent.  There is almost nothing under the sun about which a person cannot be mistaken. 

Another reason why the battered wife syndrome is so unlike these other cases is that one can rightly point to the wife’s on-going fear for her well-being and safety.  This is manifestly demoralizing.  Gays and blacks and other groups are not at all in a continuous state of fear regarding their safety and well-being.  This is true notwithstanding the fact that there are racist or homophobic or sexist outbursts here and there. 

It is no doubt annoying to be followed around by a clerk in a store.  But there is no parallel here at all to having the on-going fear that one might be brutalized by the very the person with whom one lives and with whom one is intimate.  So it would be if the same clerk followed me around every single time I went into the store. 

I might rightly think the clerk stupid or lacking in insight or lacking in sophistication.  But by hypothesis, there would be nothing analogous to a woman’s fear of being beaten by her husband. 

Both in France and in the United States, I am struck by the use of racism as an excuse for violence against others, whites especially.  In the United States, this is primarily among blacks and Latinos; in France, this is primarily among Arabs and blacks. 

The other day I was in a computer store in Paris called the FNAC; and a security guard seems to have conveniently placed himself in the vicinity of wherever I went throughout the store.  Honestly, I must say that it was more amusing than annoying.  For one thing, he could not do anything to me unless I did something inappropriate.  For another, I got to keep him on his toes, as they, as I moved about here and there touching one thing and then another.  In the end, I walked out with precisely what I wanted, precisely when I wanted to do so.

I do not deny that I am in something of a privileged position vis à vis many folks, be they black or white.  But the guard did not know that.  He did not go “Oh, let me follow that Syracuse University professor around who regularly flies between the two countries”. 

If this is right, then the deep, deep point here is that any black could have done just what I did: ignore the guard or be amused by him.  Neither requires status or privilege.

I am perfectly willing to concede for the sake of argument that the FNAC guard’s following me around was a form of racism.  But it was most certainly not a form of suffering.  And this brings me to the very poignant point that not all forms of racism or sexism or homophobia constitute a form of suffering.  Alas, you would not know that nowadays, when the world of hyperbole permits us to turn any annoyance into the most horrendous thing that has ever happened to us.  Never in the history of the world have people who have so much claimed to have suffered so much. 

Living well is very much an attitude.  To be sure, certain things are necessary.  Indeed, certain comforts are necessary.  The rest of it, though, is simply about attitude.  The reality of racism or sexism or homophobia does not change this truth.  It is simply foolish to suppose that one cannot feel at-ease in the world until every last vestige of these forms of behavior has disappeared. 

There is indeed suffering that others cause us.  But if I am right, there is no small amount of suffering that we bring upon ourselves simply because we have brought to the moment the wrong attitude.  As I remarked in connection with the FNAC store: I brought what I wanted and left when I wanted.  That really is just about all the freedom that I needed.  Whether the guard was racist or not, his following me around did not, in the end, detract one iota from the freedom that I had and wanted to have at that moment in time. 

Part of what means to take ourselves seriously as equals is to bring to the moment the moral power that we have to transform it.  Between complaining about a moment as opposed to transforming it, the latter is the more preferable choice on every account, not the least of these being that we affirm our moral powers.  Some important aspects of equality is tied to work that we must do for ourselves. 

ristotle famously remarked as follows: Hence also it is no easy task to be good. For in everything it is no easy task to find the middle, e.g. to find the middle of a circle is not for everyone but for him who knows; so, too, anyone can get angry- that is easy- or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy; wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble.

Transposing these remarks specifically to the virtue of honesty: anyone can tell the truth.  That is easy enough.  Fools can, and often do so without accountability.  Children, too, are notorious for telling infelicitous truths.  Telling the truth in the right way is, alas, a moral excellence.  My thinking about these matters is developed more fully in "Honesty as a Vice".

~ ~ ~

It might seem that lying to a friend or a loved one profoundly violates the trust that she or he has that we will tell the individual the truth and nothing but the truth.  Alas, this cannot be quite right.  Things have to be vastly more complicated than that.  There is an independent precept—call it the precept of the moral uptake in truth telling—that governs when and how we should tell truths.  This might seem woefully ad hoc.  But it is not.  Rather, it follows from the simple fact that there is an excellence that governs truth telling.  There is the truth, on the one hand, and there is the excellence that comes with telling it, on the other. 

Trust between friends and loved ones, for example, is inextricably tied to the application of this independent precept of moral uptake.  It is not at all uncommon for friends and loved ones to speak about observations (strengths or weaknesses) each had made about the other but about which nothing was said.  And to the question “Why didn’t you say something?” there are various quite acceptable responses: “Had I told you then, you would have been devastated?”, “I understood that you needed to make the discovery for yourself”, or “You were too angry to accept any observations about that—even from me”.   And so on. 

When the relationship is as it should be and the precept has been properly applied, the other acknowledges the validity of the response, characteristically expressing gratitude for the exercise of restraint on our part.  Friendships and loves could not survive in the absence of the judicious application of this independent precept regarding the moral uptake in truth telling.  Moving beyond friends and loved ones, it is often the case that we do not say things, though we know that our silence might be seen as, at the very least, the absence of disapproval because we correctly grasp that we do more harm by saying something. 

It is incontrovertible that truths should be uttered at the right time.  What seems quite doubtful, though, is the thesis that for every truth there will always be a right time to utter it.  What is more, even if that thesis should turn out to be true, what is surely false is that a person ipso facto creates the right time to tell a truth simply in virtue of asking someone a question which can be answered correctly only by uttering the truth in question, where it is not possible to declare the answer out of bounds or offer an evasive response.  What I have called the precept of the moral uptake in truth telling acknowledges this reality. 

Consider the following three examples:

Example 1: Suppose that Miriam, a 9-year old child, asks her parents whether she was wanted from the very moment of conception.  As it happens, this was not at all the case.  The pregnancy was hardly intended; and to both the husband and the wife, abortion seemed to be the most reasonable option.  But unrest while traveling abroad delayed their return home for an entire month.  It was too late for an abortion.  Upon giving birth to Miriam, who is ever so much the darling of their lives, the parents wonder how they could have ever thought about having an abortion.  But indeed they had done so.  What should the parents’ answer be to their daughter’s question?  No one will ever know the truth unless either or both of them tell it. 

Example 2: Samuli’s wife, MoChandra, is a brilliant scientist and a stunningly beautiful woman.  Samuli and Joachim are the best of friends, and Samuli asks Joachim the following question: Have you ever been aroused by or had a sexual thought about my wife?  The answer, alas, is that Joachim has indeed experienced a few spontaneous erections towards MoChandra.  But he has never in the least entertained those feelings, let alone acted upon them.  He has never in anyway acted inappropriately towards MoChandra.  He would simply never violate anyone’s marriage, let alone the marriage of a beloved friend.  Now, let us suppose that what motivated Samuli to ask this exceedingly awkward question is that another friend had proposition MoChandra.  And it is in the throes of that devastation, while talking to Joachim about the matter, that Samuli asked the question.  How should Joachim answer Samuli?  No, one will ever know the truth unless Joachim tells it. 

Example 3: Sharon and Ike were married.  Ike was an abusive husband during their brief one-year marriage.  Indeed, he repeatedly battered and raped Sharon---tying her down for each sexual exploit.  She became pregnant on one of these occasions and Ike forced her to have the baby: Gabriel.  As the child is being born, Ike dies from a cancer that no one knew he had and which, apparently, contributed to some of his horrendous behavior.  Being extremely wealthy, he left Sharon a considerable sum of money.  Indeed, their home had every conceivable amenity.  At any rate, Gabriel grows up to be an intelligent and marvelously virtuous young man.  He brought great joy to Sharon’s life.  Noting that his mother devoted her life to working for the rape crisis center, he asked her when he was just 9 years old a most riveting question, “Momma, were you ever raped?” 

I claim quite simply that it would be quite morally appropriate to lie in each of these cases, and so morally inappropriate not to do so, because the moral uptake of the truth in each instance would be horrendous. 

In none of these examples is there a truth that anyone needs to know; and the lie masks no wrong that has been done or nor does it cause any harm to anyone.  Yet, there is an enormous harm that is done to an innocent person if the truth is told.  This is the issue of what I have called the moral uptake of truth.  Any discussion of truth that ignores the reality of a truth’s moral uptake is woefully lacking.  Of course, moral uptake of a truth can be absolutely innocuous.  The reality of the matter, though, is that this is often not the case and it behooves all of us to be mindful of that.  Indeed, not to be mindful of it constitutes a kind of crass indifference to the harm that truth can cause; and that, needless to say, is hardly virtuous. 

I am struck by the fact that many who object strenuously to any form of lying seem to have no trouble with the idea of killing in the case of self-defense.  Surely, the thought cannot be that life has less value that truth.  The explanation, I think, is tied to the general clarity we have regarding when self-defense is justified.  Two comments are in order. 

First, the issue of clarity can arise even in the case of self-defense, as the battered women syndrome issue makes abundantly clear.  Second, while it is true that options can overwhelm us, it is also the case that moral excellence at its best consists not in making the right choice when there is only one alternative to choose from in the first place.  Quite contrary, the wherewithal to choose well and correctly amidst an array of alternatives evinces, at once, depth of judgment and self-command.  Thus, the discretion that is a liability at one end is an opportunity for unqualified moral excellence at the other end.  Precisely what makes friendships and romantic loves at their best such extraordinary excellences is just that fact that each party choose well amid a vast multitude of options. 

The remarks of the entry reflect the simple truth that honesty is a vice unless the truth is told when it should be told.  Accordingly, a lie told at the right time in the right way, with the right motives, can be vastly more virtuous than the truth.  

an lying be virtuous and not merely excusable?  I shall argue that it can.  I proceed in two steps, beginning first with an example where the truth is withheld, but no lie is told.  Then I shall modify the example a bit so that in point of fact a lie is told.  By the second example, I hope to have provided a case where the lie is not merely excused but is motivated by and reveals a truly virtuous character.  If this is right, then we can have a case for lying where the justification for lying is not tied to the thesis that the person had no right to the truth. 

Suppose that Gabriel learns some very bad news regarding his health just three days prior to the wedding of Jeffrey, his very dearest friend.  Gabriel learns that he has terminal cancer, with no more than 8 months to live.  Normally, Jeffrey would have been the first person to find out.  But not this time.  Gabriel flies in for the wedding and serves as Jeffrey’s best man, as had been planned.   A few months later, Jeffrey learns the truth and is very upset that Gabriel had not breathed a word about this to him.  Gabriel’s response, of course, is simple enough: “I was not about to ruin your wedding.  And your knowing would not have changed a thing”.  Without lying, Gabriel withheld information from Jeffrey; and this he did for the good of Jeffrey.  Yet, this hardly seems wrong.  Quite the contrary, it seems to have been the ever so decent thing to do.  Moreover, although Jeffrey is upset, the reason why he is upset is not that he thinks that he has been wronged by Gabriel.  Quite the contrary, it is simply that he would much rather have been there to help his friend cope with the devastating news. 

Of course, there was no lie told.  But we can easily imagine that this happens.  Modifying the example, things proceed as follows: Gabriel flies in for the wedding and serves as Jeffrey’s best man, as had been planned.  Jeffrey notes that Gabriel is looking a little pale and inquiries as to why.  Gabriel lies, though, and claims that he is just getting over a bout of influenza.  When Jeffrey finds out the truth a few months later, he is very upset.  Alas, Gabriel remarks: “I was not about to ruin your wedding and the starting of your new life.  Your knowing about my illness would not have changed a thing”.  Given the lie, does Jeffrey now have more of a reason to be upset than in the preceding case?  Does the lie reveal Gabriel to be more devious or malicious in some way?  Does the lie taint his moral character in any way at all?  Absolutely not.  We do not have a remarkably decent person in the first scenario who is willing to keep his tragic pain to himself for the sake of a dear friend’s most precious moment in life, but a fallen angel, as it were, in the second one; for the lie adds nothing whatsoever that is negative to Gabriel’s motives. 

In both scenarios, information was withheld.  But, of course, no one would argue that in the first scenario Jeffrey had a right to the information that Gabriel withheld.  Had Gabriel waited until his final moments of life to speak to Jeffrey about the matter, this would have been odd.  Perhaps disturbingly so.  Still, no right would have been violated; no wrong would have been done. 

With the modified scenario, there is the obvious difference that Jeffrey has been lied to.  But it seems that we can admit that and ask: Has Jeffrey been wronged?  For what we get with Gabriel’s lie is not a quite extraordinary coincidence where a lie turns out to be beneficial, but much more.  Notice that no one could have blamed Sebastain or called him self-centered had he lost all composure upon learning that he has terminal cancer.  But what Gabriel in fact did is saintly, showing at once both a level of selflessness and a level of integrity that is rare among human beings.  And the lie that he told was pressed in the service of the realization of these virtues.  Anything but the lie would have been the undoing of Jeffrey’s wedding; and Gabriel simply was not having that. 

The second scenario with Gabriel reveals the seminal point that in lying a person can actually exhibit behavior that rightfully elicits our moral admiration precisely because it reveals the kind of deep and extraordinary character whereby a person is willing to make a considerable sacrifice for the good of another.  The idea, then, that all lying is crass and morally base is simply mistaken.  Far from revealing a weakness, Gabriel’s lie evinces remarkable self-command.  To be sure, Gabriel did not jump upon a hand grenade in order to save a friend’s life, but in terms of motivational structure what he in fact did is ever so parallel to that sort of sacrifice.  The lie in this instance, far from destroying trust, profoundly underwrites it.  In Gabriel, Jeffrey has one extraordinary friend.  The example also brings out that we make the case for lying without supposing that the person to whom the lie is told is not owed the truth, in that the intended results of the liar are being counteracted.[1] 

At its best, respect for the truth is not just about telling the truth, but about showing respect for the other.  This is why it matters not just that we tell the truth but how and when we tell it.  For as was observed at the outset, the truth can be told in a mean and hurtful manner or in a thoughtful and considerate manner; and one does not show respect for another by telling the truth to her or him in a mean and hurtful manner.  This is the reason why there are lots of truths that we simply do not say.  In fact, we sometimes refrain from saying things that are obviously true about ourselves precisely because we come across as arrogant or mean-spirited in doing so.  Everyone knows, for instance, that University X is better than University Y.  Yet, it is very rare for a professor at University X to say “The institution at which I am a faculty member is vastly superior in terms of academic excellence to the one where you are a faculty member”.  Generally, doing so would be seen as a form of crass arrogance.  We can easily think of numerous other examples of this sort.  It may, for instance, be manifestly obvious that Zephyr is vastly more attractive than Adalon.  Everyone knows this, including Zephyr and Adalon.  Just so, there are very few scenarios, if any, where Zephyr could say this to Adalon without coming across as mean-spirited.  Differentials in body weight provide us with another example of this sort. 

It goes without saying that we cannot respect a person by lying to the individual for no other reason than to advance our own interest or to harm the person.  Nor can we respect a person by withholding information from the individual that she needs in order to make decisions about her very own life.  This is why paternalism in medicine is seen as so objectionable.  Nor, again, can we respect a person by presenting a false picture of the kind of person that we are in terms of our character, personality, or station in life; for this is tantamount to a vicious form of manipulation.  Yet, from none of this does it follow that lying to a person necessarily entails failing to have the proper moral respect for that individual, as a lie need not violate any of the moral precepts just articulated.  And one way to see this is to notice, as the remarks of the preceding paragraph make abundantly clear, that respect for the truth is utterly incompatible with being unscrupulous about what truths we tell and when we tell them or how we tell them. 

The argument of this blog-entry brings into sharp relief the truth that the moral opprobrium that we attach to lying has much more to do with motives than is generally acknowledged.  It is very rare that anyone prevaricates for the reasons that moved Gabriel (in the second scenario) to do so.  And this tells us what we already know, namely that it is quite rare for a person to have morally legitimate motives for lying.  The same also holds for killing an innocent person.