Aristotle on Lying

Aristotle on Lying JANES. ZEMBATY WHILE PLATO'S POSITION on lying has received a great deal of scholarly scrutiny , comparatively little has been written about Aristotle's.' Aristotle's statement that lies are base and reprehensible in themselves is sometimes quoted and assimilated to the contemporary position that lies have an initial negative weight because, in the absence of special considerations, truthful statements are preferable to lies.' What these special considerations might be for Aristode has not been discussed. Nor has much been said concerning the kinds of lies Aristotle might find acceptable or the reasons he might cite for the initial negadve weight assigned to lies. The purpose of this paper is to bring out Aristode's views on lying by examining some of his statements regarding the Most of the translations in this paper are mine. Translations of The Nicomachean Ethics are based on I. Bywater's text (Oxford, 1984), except for the variations indicated in the endnotes. Where I have specificallyused someone else's translations of an E.N. passage, that is indicated in an endnote. Translations of passages from Aristotle's Rhetork are primarily those of W. Rhys Roberts in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), Vol. a. The translation from Aristotle's Top/cs in note 12 is partly that of W. A. Pickard-Cambridge, in Vol. I of the Barnes edition, and partly mine. DiscussionsofPlato and lying focus primarily on the Repub/icand are included in the following texts: Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, t966) and R. H. S. Crossman, Plato Today (London: Allen Unwin, 1963). Articles on Plato and lying include Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, "Justice and Dishonesty in Plato's Republic," The Southern Journal of Philosophy 2x/l (1983): 79-95 and Jane S. Zembaty, "Plato's Repub/ic and Greek Morafity on Lying," Journal of the History of Philosophy 26/4 0988): 517-45 . Aristotle's account of truthfulness is usually treated as part of a discussion of his three social mean states/dispositions. See, for example, William W. Fortenbaugh, "Aristotle and the Questionable Mean Dispositions," Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philosophical Associat /on 99 (1968): ~o3-31 and Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Aristotle's Theory of Moral Insight (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 86--92. 9This statement is made by Sissela Bok in Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 3o. A similar sort of view is attributed to Aristotle by earlier thinkers including Hugo Grotius, On the Law of War and Peace, trans. Francis W. Kelsey (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 19~5), 61o and a paraphrast in The Paraphrase of an Anonymouz Greek Writer (Hitherto Published Under the Name of Andronicus Rhodius) on the Nicomachean Ethics ofAristotle, trans. WilliamBridgman (London: C. Wittingham, 18o7), 194-95. [7] 8 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 31:1 JANUARY 1993 truthful man, the boaster, the self-deprecator, and the magnanimous individual .s Part 1 of this paper deals with Aristotle's distinction between lies which belong to the class of unjust acts and lies which do not. This distinction is relevant to the discussion of the boaster's lies in Part 2 and Aristotle's grounds for distinguishing between lies which are more and less reprehensible. Part 3 brings out additional reasons for the initial negative weight Aristotle assigns to lies as well as some of the special considerations that make some lies nonreprehensible . Part 4 compares Aristotle's views on lies with some contemporary views on lying in general and benevolent lies in particular. 1. SHAMEFUL LIES AND JUSTICE As part of his attempt to show that the mean is always praiseworthy while both excess and deficiency are blameworthy, Aristotle discusses three mean states which have to do with "associations in conversations and actions" (E.N. ~,o8a 9- ,). One of these three, a mean between boasting and self-deprecation is concerned with truth and is called truthfulness in the Etutemian Ethics, Magna M0ra//a, and Book 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics but said to be nameless in Book 4. In the longest discussion of this...