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".

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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.