Ethics in action – part 2/3

Readers are refered to the first part of this article in order to understand the situations. I received several email replies to my previous posting. One particular email asked if the similarity is that they are all committed by Malaysians. Hmmmm..... a good point to ponder. Perhaps there are more than one point of similarities between the situations. But the similarity that I want to focus on is the fact that all four situations involve two elements – money and lies. I have already touched on the power of money in a previous writing, in which I argued that money makes people change their attitude, and that even religion gets pushed aside when money comes into play. I will just discuss about lying in this piece. But I do not want to discuss lying by using religious arguments and perspectives. That can be better done by others. Instead, let us try to look at lying by using two of the most common philosophical ethics frameworks –Kantianism and utilitarianism. Firstly, let us define a lie. A lie is defined as a fabrication, a deception or a falsification. To lie is to make a false statement to another person or another party with the intention of misleading that person or that party. Kantianism Using that definition, surely lying is always wrong. Full stop. Thou shalt not lie. No need to discuss anything anymore because everyone knows lying is wrong. This universalization of a principle pertaining to good or bad is perhaps the easiest way to describe the posture of a pure Kantian. Immanuel Kant, the great Prussian philosopher, argued that there is a single, general law of morality that governs all other ethical laws. This is what he termed as the “Categorical Imperatives”. Without wanting to get too technical, Kantians believe that there is a universal law of right and wrong. Actions should be judged based on that universal law and what is morally right will always be morally right. What is morally wrong will always be morally wrong. If charity is good, it is always good. If lying is wrong, it is always wrong. Kantians do not look at the consequences of an action. Consequences of an action are not relevant to determining whether an action is morally right or morally wrong. The key is the principle behind those actions. Kantianism would not excuse lying for any purpose. Full stop. Thus, from a Kantian perspective, in all the four imaginary situations described in Part 1, the decisions taken are all morally wrong. In situation 1, the student chose to hide the fact that he is not eligible for public funds. Hiding the truth (or even applying for public funds with full knowledge that he shouldn’t have applied in the first place) is wrong. In situation 2, the student blatantly lied and therefore this is clearly wrong. Situations 3 and 4 are similar to situation 1 in terms of hiding the truth. They are wrong too. NB: Some people may say that this is the position of Islam – lying is not allowed in any circumstances. But the reality is different. The Prophet once said: “He is not a false person who (through lies) settles conciliation among people, supports good or says what is good”. Ibn Naqib al-Misri, in his Reliance of the Traveller, quoted that Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali said “Speaking is a means to achieve an objective… When it is possible to achieve such an aim (i.e. a praiseworthy aim) by lying but not by telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible (i.e. if the aim itself it permissible). Subsequently, this topic should be explored further since it is not as straight-forward as it may seem to be. At this point, I want to advice readers to read fully Al-Misri’s texts before clinging on to this thought so as to avoid false understanding. Utilitarianism Utilitarianism sees morality in a different way. When Jeremy Bentham formulated utilitarian ethics, he argued that the morality of an action depends on the value of its consequences. If the consequence of an action brings benefit to a greater number of people, than the action is morally justifiable. But if the consequence harm a greater number of people, then it is morally unacceptable. (NB: The fuller description of Benthamite utilitarianism is more complicated than this but I do not want to get too technical). Utilitarianism is sometimes seen as the antithesis of Kantianism. While Kantians argue that such and such is categorically right or wrong, utilitarians may say “it depends”. In the contexts of lying, utilitarians do not say that lying is always wrong. If lying results in saving lives, lying is morally acceptable. For example, imagine yourself walking in town. Suddenly a man said to you that a madman is trying to kill him. He then runs away. A few minutes later, another man comes to you, with a bloody knife on his hand, and asks if you have seen so and so. In this case, utilitarian ethics would say that it is better to lie since by lying you may save someone’s life. You tell the (presumably) madman that the person he was looking for went a different way. Utilitarianism demands that you manage the situation such that the greatest benefit is brought to greatest number of people. By lying, you may have saved a life, and you did not cause any harm to the (presumably) madman. Thus lying is morally right. (This is a great over-simplification as you still do not know if the second person really is mad, or perhaps the one running away was a rapist who had raped the other person’s daughter). Coming: Ethics in action - part 3