The Ethics of Truth Telling Reflection Essay Example

What would you do if a murderer asked you where someone was hiding? Would it be unethical to lie to them, or ethical because you would save someone’s life? Must we be honest/truthful to be ethical? To determine this we must examine at what we value, what shapes our values, and moral development. 

The traditional lenses through which philosophers have approached ethics can be useful to answer this question, for example, Duty theory. Duty theory can aid in deciding if truth is essential for ethical living. The extent that we value duty theory can show the amount of duty to the law you feel, meaning you may lean towards the truth. “Conditional duties involve various types of agreements… the duty to keep one’s promises.” While absolute duties include promoting the good of others (Fieser). This implies loyalty than truth because sometimes to promote the interest of others you need to lie to help them. What we value influences how we choose to navigate different situations. One set of conflicting values is Truth v. Loyalty (Delumpa). When in situations, such as the murderer example, we are unsure which value is more significant. What we pick is determined by our principles. What if someone makes you promise to keep a certain secret? If they don’t want you to share something don’t you have more of a duty to the promise than the truth? 

Some may feel that telling the truth is mandatory for living an ethical life. While others believe that it is critical to stay loyal to others. It depends on who is around us, and the culture of the society that guides us. In Jeffrey Kluger’s article for Time Magazine, “What Makes us Moral,” the author describes that “It's the people around us who do that teaching.” What morals we value differ between cultures. The ethical obligation, to tell the truth, comes from the community that we are in.  Daniel Bell states something similar in the article “Communitarianism”, explaining that “Communitarianism is the idea that…communities shape…our moral and political judgments.” While one community may feel that honesty is a needed component of society, another may feel the opposite.  If our community highly values being honest over being loyal to others, we will feel the same. Meaning that we will feel that honesty is not an essential part of being ethical. The question of if truthfulness is a part of being ethical is steered by what we are taught and what other people believe as well.

Developmental theories provide yet another approach to the question. These theories describe how a person matures ethically. What stage of Kohlberg’s moral development you are in can cause different reactions in the face of the ethics of telling the truth. Kohlberg breaks moral development of people into 6 stages. Stage three is the Good Boy and Good Girl Attitude, meaning that you are guided by reward and punishment. When you are in Stage 3 it is more likely that you feel that truthfulness is an essential part of ethical behavior, because you are rewarded for it by your parents. Stage 4 is Loyalty to Law and Order. You have seen that following the rules is right, and prefer to continue doing so. In Stage 4 it also seems that truthfulness is important because you want to stay with the law. Truth would supersede loyalty because Loyalty lies more in protecting others without the involvement of the law. Stage 6 is Universal Principles of Ethics. By Stage 6 the value of truth over loyalty and vice versa depends on people’s own moral principles. Based on their own development of their ethics, people will have different values. People at this stage are more likely to take in different perspectives, other than the law, meaning that they lean towards loyalty more than truth in situations. 

Our values have a large influence on how we navigate through situations that question the ethicality of honesty. So is it ethical to lie to a murderer to save someone else? While I personally may feel that honestly isn’t a critical part of living ethically, the answer is going to vary from person to person based on their values, community, and moral development.