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Lying Is Always Wrong Essay

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Lying is against Deontologist school of thought because it is irrational when following the categorical imperative and it hijacks autonomous decision making. The maxim followed is: “Lying is always wrong”. We must consider what this means for an argument - when is it attractive to lie, but we still must refrain?
It is attractive to lie when we feel like we are trying to help the situation by skirting around the truth. The situation where this is best expressed it brought up by Kant in his case of the Inquiring Murderer. Here it is suggested that, even though you may be trying to protect a friend by lying to their assailant, you should still tell the murderer the truth. Why is this so challenging to our instincts? Perhaps it is because we feel …show more content…

It is best to tell the truth, even to a murderer because it relinquishes responsibility over the situation. If one was to lie to the murderer, and he caught and killed the victim anyways, his death would be morally the fault of the person who lied. This is challenging to accept because the initial reaction is to protect the victim, but by doing so one assumes responsibility for them. It is irrational to lie when considering a world where everyone lies - the murderer would know he was being lied to, thus entering the building to kill the victim regardless. Therefore, it is more rational to simply tell the truth. Additionally, by lying one is taking away choice from the murderer. Despite his bad intentions, the murderer is still considered part of the moral universe, thus his autonomy must be considered equally as important to everyone else's. Telling the murderer the location of the victim also does not explicitly infringe on the autonomy of the victim as well. His autonomy is not impacted by choosing to disclose whether or not he is in the basement - he is just as able to hide, run, or make another decision regardless of whether or not one lies to the murderer. Therefore, it can be concluded that telling the murderer the location of the victim is actually the most moral choice because it does not erode the autonomy of anyone involved and follows the guidelines of

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