A Philosophy of Lying by Lars Svendsen & Matt Bagguley

Author:Lars Svendsen & Matt Bagguley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books

Self-Presentation and Self-Deception

Few of us manage to show our cards to ourselves, let alone to anyone else. Gnothi seauton (Know thyself) was the inscription above the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Gaining self-knowledge can feel like an obligation you have to yourself. But self-knowledge doesn’t come easily. We are all con artists, not just conning others but ourselves, and we gladly credit ourselves with considerably more morally superior motives than we actually have. After all, we rarely lie as convincingly as when we have to be totally honest with ourselves. Eventually we start believing our lies, unaware that they actually are lies until our stories start clashing. This is why it can be uncomfortable when people you know well in one setting turn up in another, because it can be hard getting the different stories you have about yourself to match. In such situations we will carry on regardless – hoping we are not revealed, either by ourselves or anyone else.

It might be easier to be truthful with someone else than with yourself, but perhaps you can only be truthful with others if you are truthful with yourself. Other people can only trust you if you are truthful with them, and you can only trust yourself if you are truthful with yourself. If you cannot trust yourself, no one else can trust you.

We are always managing our image. In ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, T. S. Eliot writes: ‘To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.’24 We dress, for example, according to how we want to be perceived in different contexts. As social beings we play roles for each other while simultaneously monitoring ourselves to ensure that we play those roles correctly and comply with the social norms of the game. The Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman took this point so far as to claim that the self is just a set of roles that arise during social situations before an audience.25 Without having to agree unreservedly with Goffman’s socially reductive view of the self, it is clear that he captures something important. Not only do we create our own presentations about who we are, but we put on performances for others in which we play the role of ourselves.

Kant is positive about this because by playing such roles we can form good habits that eventually become a part of our moral character:

Men are, one and all, actors – the more so the more civilised they are. They put on a show of affection, respect for others, modesty and disinterest without deceiving anyone, since it is generally understood that they are not sincere about it. And it is a very good thing that this happens in the world. For if men keep on playing these roles, the real virtues whose semblance they have merely been affecting for a long time are gradually aroused and pass into their attitude of will.26

Playing such roles does not involve deceiving anyone else, and we can become better people as a result.

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