The third chapter of this book by Alenka Zupancic takes up the rather infamous Kantian position on the act of lying, which may require some introduction in its own regard. We may have to constrain ourselves to a popular reading of the dilemma for our present purposes.
The issue at stake is this; were a murderer with ill intent to approach our house inquiring after a friend, should we or should we not disclose his location? The Kantian answer to this, as is the position on the altruistic use of the lie in general is that the truth would still be warranted.
The author Alenka Zupancic would like to present to our consideration; the Kantian position on this dilemma from two vantages: the ethical and the legal. Benjamin Constant, a Swiss-French writer, is cited asserting that it was the absoluteness of such principles that turned general opinion against them. The inflection that this brings about is noticeable, especially in the identification of a lie; where a jurist may require the further caveat that it be doing harm to someone else.
Any possible representation of the issue is however mediated by what we may know ourselves of the situation at hand including also whether what we state is the truth or not.
Consider for instance the murderer asking about the whereabouts of our friend and we answer truthfully according to our beliefs, that he is in the house. Were our friend to have apprehended the scene and escaped from the window - this would make our response a lie even if we were not being dishonest.
A rather fine point is then presented about the contingency of our knowledge.
1. Irrespective of our answer - we cannot know with absolute certainty where our friend is at the moment. 2. There is no certainty that the murderer will believe us. To this, I would add a third reason which questions the premises of the experiment 3. We don't really know if the person asking after our friend is a murderer at all.
The prime difference between the ethical and the legal position here is that a court adjudicates on a hearing where the link between cause and effect - or the facts of the matter at hand are not already established. In other words we cannot assume that the murder will have taken place untill the very last moment of its committal. A heuristic criticism of juridical procedure it would seem. There is another criticism which kant presents against Constant's argument - while legality and the rule of law are founded apon a contract - there can be no such thing as a contract without some fundamental truthfulness. This is why Kant adds that a lie always harms another, 'if not other human beings... it nevertheless harms humanity in general, inasmuch as it vitiates the very source of law.
On this count, Kant has found his defenders. Julius Ebbinghauss, another German philosopher says ' wheras the murderer's maxim destroy the legal security of life, the liar's maxim goes much further, for it deprieves any possible security - be it the security of life or soemthing else - the security of the charachter of a legitimate demand ie. a right.
Professor Zupancic does of course offer a pragmatic objection against this claim. The law from her point of view exists so that we do not require to rely apon the truthfulness of others. In other words, it provides a firmer basis for contracts than the truthfulness of others. She does add however that 'the lie would be the 'ultimate crime' only if real relations were in fact grounded in the truthfulness of others.'
The entire situation may be redrafted, perhaps in simpler terms as a case of rules and exceptions - where a murderer (would be), at our doorstep would supposedly condone an act of dishonesty. We can see here just how easily the right to lie in this case may be extended into the right to lie in all such cases - making the exception to the rule into the rule itself.
The Kantian ethics which we have been unpacking is met with a Lacanian inversion cited by our psychoanalyst. Instead of the murderer before our doorstep, were we to find a scenario where the object of our lust were before a gallows. Apon whose consummation we would be hanged, would we accept this fate or, instead bare false testimony against our fellow countrymen? The author provides us with a rather interesting interpretation.: ' Must I follow my duty to tell the truth in so far as it preserves the authentic place of my jouissance, even if this is empty? Or must I resign myself to a life which, by making me substitute forcefully the good for the principle of my jouissance, commands me to blow alternatively hot and cold? In principle we do see here a displacement of the crux of the problem from one which affects ourselves to one which is then abnegated onto the Other. You would notice that an ethics that identifies duty with the good of one's neighbour cannot ignore this problem. The consideration of these circumstances are ultimately what would make an ethical act coherant in its fidelity to the real.
I would like to quote the author again for I think she conveys a fundamental point here regarding any possibel 'Ethics Of The Real'. "The Kantian subject cannot escape the real involved in unconditional duty by hiding behind his fellow man - but neither can this subject hide behind his duty, and use duty as an excuse for his actions. In other words the position 'I am sorry, but I had to' cannot be a valid response to the Other. The subject remains fully responsibel for their duty, or whatever they may refer to as such. 'The discourse where I use my duty as an excuse for my actions is perverse in the strictest sense of the word.' 'Here the subject attributes to the Other (to Duty or to the Law) the surplus enjoyment he derives from his actions. 'In this case the subject hides behind the law'. In other words the idea of duty entertained here exists nowhere beyond the capacity of a person to answer for their acts.
We may note also however that the author seems less willing to entetain an expressionist account of the truth, even if it were to extend to stating what is one's act, even to the extent of having to account for it, and I would add that another reading of the scenario with a murderer at our doorstep is offered to account for it. To briefly entail its conclusion, the author would state that in meeting the murderer at our doorstep we can never state that it was or is simply our duty to tell the truth. This is where the author seems to be presenting a veiled critique of a deontological ethics.
There is seemingly a non-trivial reading of the law provided here. The subject in their moment of universalisation, that is in the ennunciation of their deed, is the constitution or determination of the law. In the concluding words of the author from this chapter 'the ethical subject is the point where the universal come to itself and achieves its determination.'
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