Immanuel Kant And Aristotle: The Definition Of Dishonesty

Dishonesty is an equivalent of lying and it is in many cases considered to be morally wrong by many people. A lie refers to a false statement that is made with a deliberate intention of deceiving. Many philosophers who have explored the concept of dishonesty or lying have looked at it on different dimension or perspectives. For instance, philosophers such as Immanuel Kant considered it to be wrong because it corrupts an important quality of being human as well as the ability of an individual to make rational choices. According to Aristotle, dishonesty is in many cases a moral vice because it hampers individual efforts of achieving what he termed as the eudaimonia. Aristotle considered eudaimonia to be the state of real happiness,

She adopted a broad definition of lying and she defined it as the statement that is made in order to deceive. Bok seems to distance herself from the views of both Kant and Aristotle in relation to the issues of lying. She disagrees with Kant that lying is always wrong and she states that there are situations when lying is necessary especially where it can save a life. On an equal measure she totally disagrees with Aristotle that an individual should balance between the benefits and harms to decide if lying is morally justifiable (Bok 54). He disagrees with the Aristotle approach because it ignores the damages that is done to the liar by trying to cover up such as loss of credibility if the truth is realized, use of a lot of energy in attempt to cover up, damaging of overall trust in the communication in the society and it increases a propensity to lie in the future. In addition, Bok also points out that the liar is also likely to be biased on the sense that he or she is likely to underestimate risks of being discovered and at the same time overestimate consequential benefit of lying (Bok 63). The liar is also likely to ignore the lies that become institutional and those that are isolated