I’ve mostly read Kant through the *Critique of Pure Reason* and other parts related to metaphysics; I haven’t read much of the ethics. Of course, when studying general ethics, one does read some secondhand introductions, but they usually just give a brief account of the so-called “categorical imperative” and broadly classify Kant as a representative of so-called “deontology.” I don’t have a deep grasp of it, but it feels to me that these tedious summaries hardly show the force one senses in Kant’s texts.
Kant’s “categorical imperative” is not really some ready-made fixed absolute dogma; rather, it points to a way of thinking, and in fact serves as a constraint on dogma itself: whatever can be elevated to dogma must be capable of universalization. In plain language, that seems like a tautology, but it does have real force.
Kant’s biggest problem is that he was too deeply influenced by Newtonian mechanics, and the interpreters after Kant fell even more deeply into the mindset of the exact sciences, eventually trying to turn ethics into an axiomatized, universalized, decontextualized system of rules. But if we do not take the scientific route, and instead understand Kant’s imperatives as some kind of guiding principle for “self-reflection” rather than as objective rules anonymized for others, then perhaps Kant’s ethics can be transformed into something much livelier.
Among the few “imperatives” Kant explicitly argues for, the one that leaves the deepest impression is “do not lie.” His criticism of the so-called “white lie” is also one of the common examples later generations use to classify Kant as a deontologist rather than a consequentialist.
The example Kant himself gives is roughly this:
A villain is chasing after your friend. He stops you and asks where your friend went. You know he’s hiding at home, but you tell the villain: he went east.
—This lie saves your friend’s life and prevents a serious wrongdoing; isn’t that a great good?
But Kant says: if your friend had slipped out the back door without your knowing, happened to hide to the east, and then the villain, following your directions, happened to kill him, would you have to bear the blame?
Kant believes that the logic by which one assigns credit in the first case and the logic by which one bears guilt in the second are symmetrical: if you think that in the first case you participated in saving a person, then in the second case you participated in killing a person.
Further, Kant invokes the logic of the “categorical imperative,” pointing out that if you want to universalize “one ought to lie for good consequences” as a rule, then it will instead produce the worst possible “consequences.”
For example, your friend will also deceive you: he is clearly not at home, but in order to prevent you from revealing the truth to the villain, he lies and says he is hiding at home. He is also right to do this. Before you use a lie to mislead the villain, you would first have to examine whether you yourself have been misled by a lie. When exactly ought you to lie, and when ought you to suspect that others are lying? Everything becomes hopelessly ambiguous.
And Kant thinks the matter is actually quite simple: killing is the killer’s fault, giving the wrong directions is the fault of the person who gives them, and the person who gives directions has not participated, nor need participate, in the act of killing.
There is another key logic hidden in this example, namely respect for “free will.” Every person has both the right and the duty to make choices freely from their own perspective, and to be responsible for their own choices. He chose to kill, then he is the one responsible for the act of killing; I chose to lie, then I am the one responsible for the act of lying.
Of course, if we do not read Kant so rigidly, then according to this logic, can one lie to save someone? Of course one still can, because a person with free will can also do wrong, and if one does wrong, one simply bears the cost of doing wrong. In other words, whether I tell the truth or try to stop a murder by lying, the outcome of the murder has nothing to do with me; whether the killing succeeds or fails is neither my merit nor my guilt. But the consequences of the lie are related to me: I do not need to bear responsibility for the murder, but I cannot evade responsibility for the lie.
For example, what if the so-called villain is merely your misjudgment: in fact, your friend is the villain, and he is torturing and killing a child at home, while the person you mistakenly take to be the villain is urgently trying to stop the abuse, but is unfortunately led astray by you—must you then bear some part of the guilt for the child’s torture and killing? Of course not, because the act of torture and killing also proceeds from your friend’s free will.
Or for example, your friend suddenly falls ill at home, and the person you take to be the villain is in fact a doctor who has hurried over after learning of the condition. You mistake him for the murderer and mislead him—must you then bear some responsibility for your friend’s sudden death? That, I’m afraid, is harder to escape, because dying of illness is not caused by an agent acting out of free will, whereas the sabotage of rescue efforts has a share of your credit.
But why would you take the doctor for a villain? If the doctor simply explains his purpose, wouldn’t the misunderstanding be cleared up? It could be that he did speak truthfully, but you thought it was a villain’s disguise and did not trust it; or it could be that the doctor thought you were a personal enemy, and so concealed his motive for coming to save someone.
Each person independently thinks with free will; if lying is encouraged, it will very likely become a state of mutual suspicion and mutual deception. The simple and clear solution is that everyone should not lie, nor presuppose that others are lying, but speak according to one’s genuine judgment. In that way responsibility becomes clear: whoever kills is wrong, whoever lies is wrong—simple and clear.
In addition, the key issue lurking in this example is the acknowledgment of the limits of personal experience: I can only be responsible for giving my own judgment on the basis of my personal experience; I have no right to make judgments for others, and no right to stand in for God and deliver the final verdict. One cannot strip others of their freedom to choose on the grounds that “I’m doing this for your own good,” and still less can one deceive and mislead in the name of your own good.
I wrote this article out of a sudden feeling, because I was reminded of the logic prevalent in China today, which has always lacked the Enlightenment spirit represented by Kant—namely, that each person ought to be responsible for himself, neither shirking nor overreaching. Be courageous in using reason, and bear freedom. Perhaps Kant is too rigid and extreme in some respects, but we truly need Kant; we need the Enlightenment.
“White lies” are the kind of logic that is popular among us: for social stability, for your own good, for the good of the nation, so we must deceive, must falsify.
Perhaps the public will become confused and suffer after hearing the truth, but perhaps lies will also lead to other kinds of confusion. The key question is: do we regard the people as a collection of rational individuals with free will, each responsible for themselves? Or do we regard certain people as omniscient and omnipotent gods, imagining that these people can stand in for the public and judge the goodness or badness of “consequences” and the benefits of lying?
In a community made up of countless free persons but no god, there should be no “white lies.” This is Kant’s stubbornness, and this too is the spirit of “Enlightenment.”
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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