argumentative essay about lying

Is It Always Wrong to Lie?

Exploring the morality of deception..

Posted June 13, 2019 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

Is lying ever the right thing to do? Are there some situations in which dishonesty is morally justified? Are there good and noble lies? These questions concerning the ethics of lying are more than trivial curiosities for armchair philosophers. They are quite consequential in our day-to-day lives.

Most people would argue that lying to people in order to swindle them out of money would be immoral. Is it also immoral to lie to a child about Santa Claus? Is it immoral for a doctor to spare a person’s feelings by telling them that their family member died quickly and peacefully, when, in fact, they died a slow, horribly agonizing death?

A good place to begin exploring the rightness or wrongness of lying is an examination of morality more broadly. The ethics and morality of behavior have been considered by philosophers and psychologists for ages, but recent experimental work has revealed the underlying psychology of our moral judgments.

Work by psychologist Kurt Gray and others indicates that we deem acts to be immoral when we sense that a person knowingly does something harmful to another individual who feels that harm. In the context of lying, that means that people perceive a lie as immoral if one person knowingly tells a lie that inflicts harm that is felt by another.

Disagreements about the morality of a lie seem to stem from ambiguity about the degree to which the lie caused harm. Clearly, we don’t perceive all types of lies as being equally bad and immoral, and this variability seems to be tied to the amount of harm the lies cause.

Some deception researchers have differentiated between broad classes of lies. One such category is the self-interested lie . This type of lie is exploitative in nature. Liars tell these types of lies in order to gain or retain an advantage over others. Examples include lying about one’s qualifications in a job interview or lying to a spouse about one’s whereabouts to avoid a confrontation. These lies give the liar an advantage while placing the dupe at a disadvantage.

Another category of lie is the other-oriented lie . These lies are told with the motivation to help or protect others. These lies are altruistic in intent. Examples include benevolent white lies such as telling someone their new haircut looks great when it really doesn’t. This category also includes paternalistic lies people tell in order to help someone. For instance, if a woman knows that her husband is trying to lose weight but is also struggling to stay on his diet , she might tell him that all of the cookies are gone, when they are actually hidden away in the pantry. Are both self-interested and other-oriented lies immoral? Most people believe that the exploitative self-interested lies are immoral, but are less certain about the moral position of other-oriented lies.

The moral quandary around other-oriented lies plays out in varied contexts. Consider the position of nurses who work in adult care facilities with people suffering from dementia . Is it permissible to lie to these patients? If a patient with dementia repeatedly asks a nurse when her husband is going to visit, forgetting that her husband actually died years ago, should the nurse repeatedly remind the patient that her husband is dead? Would a gentle lie such as, “maybe later,” be more humane and ethical?

In one study carried out with nurses who work in such a setting, over 90 percent of them believed it was ethical to lie to their patients. However, they saw ethical distinctions depending on the nature of the lie. For instance, 92 percent of them thought it was ethical to lie to patients in order to reduce aggressive behavior, but only 36 percent thought it was ethical to lie in order to save time dealing with patients.

How do we decide if lies are morally permissible or not? The process for making these types of moral decisions typically falls into one of two approaches: deontological perspectives or consequential perspectives .

Proponents of the deontological perspective argue that the morality of lying rests in the inherent and universal rightness or wrongness of the act. That is, there are certain rules, maxims, cultural values, or religious laws, often described as natural laws , that we are morally bound to uphold. The imperative of honesty is one such natural law. From the deontological perspective, honesty is inherently good and lying is inherently evil, so we are duty bound to be truthful. Thou shalt not lie!

On the other hand, the consequentialist perspective argues that the morality or immorality of a lie depends on the consequences or outcomes of the lie. From this perspective, some lies can be good and others can be bad, depending on their outcomes. If a lie produces a good, it is good, moral, and allowable. If it produces harm, it is bad, immoral, and not allowable.

When it comes to exploitative self-interested lies, both the deontological and the consequential perspectives would characterize the lie as immoral. Through the deontological lens, self-interested lies are wrong because cultural and religious rules tell us that all lies are wrong. Through the consequentialist lens, a self-interested lie is also wrong because such lies necessarily exploit or harm others, thus the outcome is a negative one. But what of the other-oriented lies?

The deontological perspective would lead to a conclusion that other-oriented lies are also immoral because they are still lies, and all lies violate the maxim against dishonesty. We should always be truthful.

However, the consequentialist perspective on other-oriented lies is not as clear-cut. It may be the case that some other-oriented lies lead to positive consequences. So, this would lead to the conclusion that it is morally acceptable to tell some lies, as long as the lie results in help, not harm.

I knew an elderly woman whose family members lied to her about the fact that her son was dying of cancer. Rather than telling the elderly woman that her son was in the hospital, they told her that her son was on a long business trip to Green Bay, Wisconsin. They told this lie in an altruistic attempt to spare the elderly woman the emotional pain of learning that her son was dying. Was that lie morally acceptable? From their consequentialist perspective, their lie was morally justified because it hurt no one and it prevented emotional pain. It was, they argued, a good lie. But was the lie actually harmless?

In his essay titled "Lying," the author Sam Harris argues that there are no good lies. He reasons that all lies, no matter how trivial or well-intentioned, ultimately cause harm. His stance is that all lies erode autonomy. That is, by robbing someone of the truth, you steal away their opportunity to freely make decisions based on the facts of reality. For instance, he would argue that we should not lie to a person about their family member who is dying because such a lie would prevent them from emotionally preparing for the eventuality of their family member’s death. Further, it would prevent them from saying last goodbyes, sharing true feelings, offering deathbed forgiveness , etc.

Harris also argues that these supposedly altruistic lies actually cause harm by undermining the trust that we all have in each other. After all, if I see you lying to your grandmother in order to spare her feelings, how can I trust that you will be forthright with me when you have some serious information that might affect me? On a broader societal level, Harris argues that when we speak dishonestly, we also harm the fabric of society by violating the trust that binds us all together. Perhaps all lies, despite any good motives behind them, are harmful in the end.

Are there any exceptions? Are there lies that are good both in the moment and in the long view? There is a classic thought experiment used to explore this question. Imagine that you are in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. Imagine you are strolling down an alleyway, and suddenly a Jewish child runs past you. As he ducks into a darkened stairwell, he pleads with you, “Please don’t tell the Germans that you saw me, or they will kill me.” Moments later a group of Nazi soldiers run around the corner and ask you, “Did you just see a small child around here?” Would you tell the truth or would you lie? Most people who are asked this question answer that they would lie. They usually report that it would be immoral to tell the truth and it would morally correct to lie. Their consequentialist reasoning is that the lie will spare the life of the child, while causing no real harm to anyone else. Furthermore, many argue that it is not immoral to lie to the Nazis because, owing to their own moral corruption, they do not deserve the truth. In fact, I believe that if you admitted that you would honestly report the location of the child to the Nazis, most people would find you morally reprehensible. That is, by being honest you would be viewed as a moral violator. For most people, consequentialism seems to beat out deontology in this case. Perhaps there are a narrow set of lies that most people view as the good or the moral lies.

So how do we decide when it is acceptable to lie and when it is not? Is there any guiding criterion or any consensus about which lies are the morally acceptable ones? Consensus is exactly what the philosopher Sissela Bok advocated for in her seminal book, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life . First, it should be noted that Dr. Bok is very much opposed to lying. However, she acknowledges that an absolutist position on prohibitions against lying is not tenable.

She argues that in some rare instances, it may be morally acceptable to tell a lie. Bok argues that when we make a decision about whether it is appropriate to lie, we should ask two questions. First, she argues that we should ask ourselves if there is a more honest alternative action we could take instead of telling a lie.

If there is not, the question we should ask ourselves is whether our lie passes the reasonable person test. If we presented our lie to a jury of reasonable peers, would they unanimously agree that our lie was morally acceptable? Sometimes, our immediate circumstances do not allow us to consult peers about the morality of a lie, and so we must consult an imaginary group of reasonable people.

Obviously, we tend to be biased in our own favor when guessing what others would find justifiable, so we must be as honest with ourselves as possible. If our own conscience tells us that the lie is necessary, and if we find that a panel of reasonable people would find the lie justifiable, only then, Bok argues, can we ethically tell a lie. I believe that Bok’s analysis would let you off the hook if you lied to Nazis in order to spare the life of a child.

We behave immorally when we knowingly do something harmful to another person who feels that harm. Our lies often cause harm, even though that harm may not always be readily apparent to us. If we are honest with ourselves—really honest—and we take the time and effort to openly consider the many ways that even our supposedly trivial white lies might cause damage or harm to others or to society, we might find that the number of lies we once saw as morally justifiable shrink down to a minuscule number of ethically defensible falsehoods.

Challenging ourselves to be completely honest all of the time is arduous. From childhood , most of us are taught that there are certain social niceties that require us to deceive in order to protect others’ feelings or to preserve social harmony.

Perhaps if we try to be completely honest even when it is difficult, there will be large benefits that outweigh any immediate social costs. It may be that total honesty will strengthen our relationships as our peers see us as more genuine and vulnerable. If we are always truthful, people may learn that they can always trust us at our word and can ultimately count on us for our honest point of view. Being entirely honest would also remove the screens of deception that we use to conceal our bad behaviors and manage impressions, so perhaps it would drive us to live more honorable and virtuous lives. Maybe treating our little everyday lies as immoral and avoiding them will lead us all to become better people.

Bok, S. (1999). Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life . New York: Pantheon Books.

Schein, C., & Gray, K. (2018). The theory of dyadic morality: Reinventing moral judgment by redefining harm. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 22 (1), 32–70.

Harris, S. (2013). Lying . Four Elephants Press.

Christian L. Hart, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology at Texas Woman’s University, where he is the Director of the Psychological Science program and the Director of the Human Deception Laboratory.

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What’s Good about Lying?

Do you teach children to lie?

I do. All the time. And you do, too! If you’re like most American parents, you point to presents under the Christmas tree and claim that a man named Santa Claus put them there. But your deliberate deceptions probably go beyond Santa, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny.

How many of us tell our kids (or students) that everything is fine when, in fact, everything is totally wrong, in order to preserve their sense of security? Have you been honest about everything having to do with, say, your love life, or what happens at work? Do you praise drawings they bring home from school that you actually think are terrible?

We don’t just lie to protect our kids from hard truths, either. We actually coach them to lie, as when we ask them to express delight at tube socks from Aunt Judy or Uncle Bob’s not-so-delicious beef stew.

These are what scientists call “prosocial lies”—falsehoods told for someone else’s benefit, as opposed to “antisocial lies” that are told strictly for your own personal gain.

Most research suggests that children develop the ability to lie at about age three. By age five, almost all children can (and will) lie to avoid punishment or chores—and a minority will sporadically tell prosocial lies. From ages seven to eleven, they begin to reliably lie to protect other people or to make them feel better—and they’ll start to consider prosocial lies to be justified . They’re not just telling white lies to please adults. The research to date suggests that they are motivated by strong feelings of empathy and compassion.

Why should that be the case? What is going on in children’s minds and bodies that allows this capacity to develop? What does this developmental arc reveal about human beings—and how we take care of each other? That’s what a recent wave of studies has started to uncover.

Taken together, this research points to one message: Sometimes, lying can reveal what’s best in people.

How we learn to lie

At first, the ability to lie reflects a developmental milestone: Young children are acquiring a “theory of mind,” which is psychology’s way of describing our ability to distinguish our own beliefs, intents, desires, and knowledge from what might be in the minds of other people. Antisocial lying appears earlier than prosocial lying in children because it’s much simpler, developmentally; it mainly requires an understanding that adults can’t read your mind.

More on Honesty

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But prosocial lying needs more than just theory of mind. It requires the ability to identify suffering in another person ( empathy ) and the desire to alleviate that suffering ( compassion ). More than that, even, it involves anticipation that our words or actions might cause suffering in a hypothetical future. Thus, prosocial lying reflects the development of at least four distinct human capacities: theory of mind, empathy, compassion, and the combination of memory and imagination that allows us to foresee the consequences of our words.

How do we know that kids have all of these capacities? Could they just be lying to get out of the negative consequences of telling the truth? Or perhaps they’re simply lazy; is it easier to lie than be honest?

For a paper published in 2015 , Harvard psychologist Felix Warneken had adults show elementary-aged children two pictures they drew—one pretty good, one terrible. If the adults didn’t show any particular pride in the picture, the kids were truthful in saying whether it was good or bad. If the grown-up acted sad about being a bad artist, most of the kids would rush to reassure her that it wasn’t too awful. In other words, they told a white lie; the older they were, they more likely the kids were to say a bad drawing was good. There were no negative consequences for telling the truth to these bad artists; the kids just wanted these strangers to feel better about themselves.

In other words, says Warneken, it’s a feeling of empathic connection that drives children to tell white lies. In fact, children are trying to resolve two conflicting norms—honesty vs. kindness—and by about age seven, his studies suggest, they start consistently coming down on the side of kindness. This reflects increasingly sophisticated moral and emotional reasoning.

“When is it right to prioritize another person’s feelings over truth?” says Warneken. “Say, if someone cooks something for you, and it just doesn’t taste good. Well, if they’re applying for cooking school somewhere, the prosocial thing is to be honest, so that they can improve. But if they just cooked it on their own just for you, then perhaps it’s better to lie and say it tastes good.”

It’s a good sign, developmentally, when kids show the ability to make that kind of calculation. Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence that we tend to see prosocial lies as the more moral choice. For example, people seem to behave more prosocially —more grateful, more generous, more compassionate—in the presence of images depicting eyes. While one would expect people to lie less under the eyes, in fact it appears to influence what kind of lie they tell: When Japanese researchers gave students an opportunity to make someone feel good with a lie, they were much more likely to do so with a pair of eyes looking down on them .

No eyes? They were more likely to tell the cold, hard truth!

How lies change as we grow

This moral self-consciousness appears to grow in tandem with the child’s self-control and cognitive ability.

Another study published last year in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology found that “children who told prosocial lies had higher performance on measures of working memory and inhibitory control.” This especially helped them to control “leakage”—a psychologist’s term for inconsistencies in a fake story.

To tell a prosocial lie, a child’s brain needs to juggle many balls—drop one, and the lie will be discovered. Some children are simply better truth-jugglers than others. Far from reflecting laziness, prosocial lying seems to entail a great deal more cognitive and emotional effort than truth-telling. In fact, one 2014 paper found tired adults are much less likely to engage in prosocial lying.

Studies by other researchers show that as kids grow older, the relationship between theory of mind and dishonesty starts to shift. Young children with high theory of mind will tell more antisocial lies than peers. This pattern flips as we age: Older children who have a stronger theory of mind start telling fewer antisocial lies—and more prosocial ones.

Kids also gradually become more likely to tell “blue lies” as they advance through adolescence: altruistic falsehoods, sometimes told at a cost to the liar, that are intended to protect a group, like family or classmates. (Think: lying about a crime committed by a sibling, or deceiving a teacher about someone else’s misbehavior.)

Though adults can (and do) teach children to tell polite lies—and in a lab context, kids can be primed by adults to tell them—Warneken says it’s more likely that successful prosocial lying is a byproduct of developing other capacities, like empathy and self-control. When kids acquire those skills, they gain the ability to start telling both white and blue lies.

But how do other people feel if these lies are found out?

The lies that bind

As they grow older, kids are also developing the ability to detect lies —and to distinguish selfish from selfless ones. The distinction comes down to intent, which studies show can be discerned through recognition of telltale signs in the face and voice of the liar.

In a study published last year, researchers used the Facial Action Coding System , developed by Paul Ekman , to map children’s faces as they told lies that served either themselves or others. The team, based at the University of Toronto and UC San Diego, found that the two different kinds of lies produced markedly different facial expressions.

“Prosocial lying reflects the development of at least four distinct human capacities: theory of mind, empathy, compassion, and the combination of memory and imagination that allows us to foresee the consequences of our words.”

Prosocial lies (which in this case involved delight in a disappointing gift) were betrayed by expressions that resembled joy—a “lip raise on the right side” that hinted at a barely concealed smile, and a blinking pattern associated with happiness. The faces of children lying to conceal a misdeed showed signs of contempt, mainly a slight lip pucker that stops short of being a smirk.

It’s almost certainly the case that we are subconsciously picking up on these signs (along with tells in the liar’s voice) when we catch someone in a lie. But research finds that the consequences of catching someone in a prosocial lie are often very different from those of an antisocial lie, or “black lie,” as they’re sometimes called. In fact, detecting a prosocial lie can increase trust and social bonds.

A series of four 2015 studies from the Wharton School had participants play economic games that involved different kinds of trust and deception. Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that black lies hurt trust. But if participants saw that the deception was altruistic in nature, trust between game-players actually increased. A complex mathematical 2014 study compared the impact of black and white lies on social networks. Again, black lies drove wedges into social networks. But white lies had precisely the opposite effect, tightening social bonds. Several studies have found that people are quick to forgive white lies, and even to appreciate them.

These differences show up in brain scans—and how different types of lies affect the brain can actually influence behavior down the road. A research team led by Neil Garrett at Princeton University assigned 80 people a financial task that allowed them to gain money at another person’s expense if they kept on lying.

“We found that people started with small lies, but slowly, over the course of the experiment, lied more and more,” they write . When they scanned the brains of participants, they found that activity lessened (mainly in the amygdala) with each new lie.

Not everyone lied or lied to their own advantage. One variation in the experiment allowed participants to lie so that another participant would gain more money—and the behavior and the brain scans of those people looked very different. Dishonesty for the benefit of others did not escalate in the same way selfish lies did; while people did lie for others, the lies did not get bigger or more frequent, as with black lies. And it did not trigger the same pattern of activity in the amygdala, which previous research has found lights up when we contemplate immoral acts. (Their methods are described more fully in the video below.)

In short, the brain’s resistance to deception remained steady after participants told prosocial lies—while self-serving lies seemed to decrease it, making black lies a slippery slope.

The upshot of all this research? Not all lies are the same, a fact we seem to recognize deep in our minds and bodies. We may indeed teach children to lie, both implicitly with our behavior and explicitly with our words; but some of those lies help to bind our families and friends together and to create feelings of trust. Other kinds of lies destroy those bonds.

This all might seem overly complex, more so than the simple prescription to not tell a lie. The trouble with do-not-lie prohibitions is that kids can plainly see lying is ubiquitous, and as they grow, they discover that not all lies have the same motivation or impact. How are we supposed to understand these nuances, and communicate them to our children?

In fact, the argument for prosocial lies is the same one against black lies: other people’s feelings matter—and empathy and kindness should be our guide.

About the Author

Jeremy Adam Smith

Uc berkeley.

Jeremy Adam Smith edits the GGSC's online magazine, Greater Good . He is also the author or coeditor of five books, including The Daddy Shift , Are We Born Racist? , and (most recently) The Gratitude Project: How the Science of Thankfulness Can Rewire Our Brains for Resilience, Optimism, and the Greater Good . Before joining the GGSC, Jeremy was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.

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Lying in Politics: Hannah Arendt on Deception, Self-Deception, and the Psychology of Defactualization

By maria popova.

“The possibilities that exist between two people, or among a group of people,” Adrienne Rich wrote in her beautiful 1975 speech on lying and what truth really means , “are a kind of alchemy. They are the most interesting thing in life. The liar is someone who keeps losing sight of these possibilities.” Nowhere is this liar’s loss of perspective more damaging to public life, human possibility, and our collective progress than in politics, where complex social, cultural, economic, and psychological forces conspire to make the assault on truth traumatic on a towering scale.

Those forces are what Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975), one of the most incisive thinkers of the past century, explores in a superb 1971 essay titled “Lying in Politics,” written shortly after the release of the Pentagon Papers and later included in Crises of the Republic ( public library ) — a collection of Arendt’s timelessly insightful and increasingly timely essays on politics, violence, civil disobedience, and the pillars of a sane and stable society.

Out of the particular treachery the Pentagon Papers revealed, Arendt wrests a poignant meditation on the betrayal we feel at every revelation that our political leaders — those we have elected to be our civil servants — have deceived and disappointed us. With the release of the Pentagon Papers, Arendt argues, “the famous credibility gap … suddenly opened up into an abyss” — an abyss rife with the harrowing hollowness of every political disappointment that ever was and ever will be. In a quest to illuminate the various “aspects of deception, self-deception, image-making, ideologizing, and defactualization,” she writes:

Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings. Whoever reflects on these matters can only be surprised by how little attention has been paid, in our tradition of philosophical and political thought, to their significance, on the one hand for the nature of action and, on the other, for the nature of our ability to deny in thought and word whatever happens to be the case. This active, aggressive capability is clearly different from our passive susceptibility to falling prey to error, illusion, the distortions of memory, and to whatever else can be blamed on the failings of our sensual and mental apparatus.

A defender of the contradictory complexity of the human experience and its necessary nuance, Arendt reminds us that the human tendency toward deception isn’t so easily filed into a moral binary. Two millennia after Cicero argued that the human capacities for envy and compassion have a common root , Arendt argues that our moral flaws and our imaginative flair spring from the same source:

A characteristic of human action is that it always begins something new, and this does not mean that it is ever permitted to start ab ovo , to create ex nihilo . In order to make room for one’s own action, something that was there before must be removed or destroyed, and things as they were before are changed. Such change would be impossible if we could not mentally remove ourselves from where we physically are located and imagine that things might as well be different from what they actually are. In other words, the deliberate denial of factual truth — the ability to lie — and the capacity to change facts — the ability to act — are interconnected; they owe their existence to the same source: imagination. It is by no means a matter of course that we can say , “The sun shines,” when it actually is raining (the consequence of certain brain injuries is the loss of this capacity); rather, it indicates that while we are well equipped for the world, sensually as well as mentally, we are not fitted or embedded into it as one of its inalienable parts. We are free to change the world and to start something new in it. Without the mental freedom to deny or affirm existence, to say “yes” or “no” — not just to statements or propositions in order to express agreement or disagreement, but to things as they are given, beyond agreement or disagreement, to our organs of perception and cognition — no action would be possible; and action is of course the very stuff politics are made of. Hence, when we talk about lying … let us remember that the lie did not creep into politics by some accident of human sinfulness. Moral outrage, for this reason alone, is not likely to make it disappear.

Since history is a form of collective memory woven of truth-by-consensus, it is hardly surprising that our collective memory should be so imperfect and fallible given how error-prone our individual memory is . Arendt captures this elegantly:

The deliberate falsehood deals with contingent facts; that is, with matters that carry no inherent truth within themselves, no necessity to be as they are. Factual truths are never compellingly true. The historian knows how vulnerable is the whole texture of facts in which we spend our daily life; it is always in danger of being perforated by single lies or torn to shreds by the organized lying of groups, nations, or classes, or denied and distorted, often carefully covered up by reams of falsehoods or simply allowed to fall into oblivion. Facts need testimony to be remembered and trustworthy witnesses to be established in order to find a secure dwelling place in the domain of human affairs. From this, it follows that no factual statement can ever be beyond doubt.

In a sentiment that calls to mind Maria Konnikova’s fascinating inquiry into the psychology of why cons work on even the most rational of us , Arendt adds:

It is this fragility that makes deception so very easy up to a point, and so tempting. It never comes into a conflict with reason, because things could indeed have been as the liar maintains they were. Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear. He has prepared his story for public consumption with a careful eye to making it credible, whereas reality has the disconcerting habit of confronting us with the unexpected, for which we were not prepared. Under normal circumstances the liar is defeated by reality, for which there is no substitute; no matter how large the tissue of falsehood that an experienced liar has to offer, it will never be large enough, even if he enlists the help of computers, to cover the immensity of factuality. The liar, who may get away with any number of single falsehoods, will find it impossible to get away with lying on principle.

Arendt considers one particularly pernicious breed of liars — “public-relations managers in government who learned their trade from the inventiveness of Madison Avenue.” In a sentiment arguably itself defeated by reality — a reality in which someone like Donald Trump sells enough of the public on enough falsehoods to get gobsmackingly close to the presidency — she writes:

The only limitation to what the public-relations man does comes when he discovers that the same people who perhaps can be “manipulated” to buy a certain kind of soap cannot be manipulated — though, of course, they can be forced by terror — to “buy” opinions and political views. Therefore the psychological premise of human manipulability has become one of the chief wares that are sold on the market of common and learned opinion.

In what is possibly the finest parenthetical paragraph ever written, and one of particularly cautionary splendor today, Arendt adds:

(Oddly enough, the only person likely to be an ideal victim of complete manipulation is the President of the United States. Because of the immensity of his job, he must surround himself with advisers … who “exercise their power chiefly by filtering the information that reaches the President and by interpreting the outside world for him.” The President, one is tempted to argue, allegedly the most powerful man of the most powerful country, is the only person in this country whose range of choices can be predetermined. This, of course, can happen only if the executive branch has cut itself off from contact with the legislative powers of Congress; it is the logical outcome in our system of government when the Senate is being deprived of, or is reluctant to exercise, its powers to participate and advise in the conduct of foreign affairs. One of the Senate’s functions, as we now know, is to shield the decision-making process against the transient moods and trends of society at large — in this case, the antics of our consumer society and the public-relations managers who cater to it.)

Arendt turns to the role of falsehood, be it deliberate or docile, in the craftsmanship of what we call history:

Unlike the natural scientist, who deals with matters that, whatever their origin, are not man-made or man-enacted, and that therefore can be observed, understood, and eventually even changed only through the most meticulous loyalty to factual, given reality, the historian, as well as the politician, deals with human affairs that owe their existence to man’s capacity for action, and that means to man’s relative freedom from things as they are. Men who act, to the extent that they feel themselves to be the masters of their own futures, will forever be tempted to make themselves masters of the past, too. Insofar as they have the appetite for action and are also in love with theories, they will hardly have the natural scientist’s patience to wait until theories and hypothetical explanations are verified or denied by facts. Instead, they will be tempted to fit their reality — which, after all, was man-made to begin with and thus could have been otherwise — into their theory, thereby mentally getting rid of its disconcerting contingency.

This squeezing of reality into theory, Arendt admonishes, is also a centerpiece of the political system, where the inherent complexity of reality is flattened into artificial oversimplification:

Much of the modern arsenal of political theory — the game theories and systems analyses, the scenarios written for imagined “audiences,” and the careful enumeration of, usually, three “options” — A, B, C — whereby A and C represent the opposite extremes and B the “logical” middle-of-the-road “solution” of the problem — has its source in this deep-seated aversion. The fallacy of such thinking begins with forcing the choices into mutually exclusive dilemmas; reality never presents us with anything so neat as premises for logical conclusions. The kind of thinking that presents both A and C as undesirable, therefore settles on B, hardly serves any other purpose than to divert the mind and blunt the judgment for the multitude of real possibilities.

But even more worrisome, Arendt cautions, is the way in which such flattening of reality blunts the judgment of government itself — nowhere more aggressively than in the overclassification of documents, which makes information available only to a handful of people in power and, paradoxically, not available to the representatives who most need that information in order to make decisions in the interest of the public who elected them. Arendt writes:

Not only are the people and their elected representatives denied access to what they must know to form an opinion and make decisions, but also the actors themselves, who receive top clearance to learn all the relevant facts, remain blissfully unaware of them. And this is so not because some invisible hand deliberately leads them astray, but because they work under circumstances, and with habits of mind, that allow them neither time nor inclination to go hunting for pertinent facts in mountains of documents, 99½ per cent of which should not be classified and most of which are irrelevant for all practical purposes. […] If the mysteries of government have so befogged the minds of the actors themselves that they no longer know or remember the truth behind their concealments and their lies, the whole operation of deception, no matter how well organized its “marathon information campaigns,” in Dean Rusk’s words, and how sophisticated its Madison Avenue gimmickry, will run aground or become counterproductive, that is, confuse people without convincing them. For the trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods.

She extrapolates the broader human vulnerability to falsehood:

The deceivers started with self-deception. […] The self-deceived deceiver loses all contact with not only his audience, but also the real world, which still will catch up with him, because he can remove his mind from it but not his body.

Crises of the Republic is a spectacular and spectacularly timely read in its totality. Complement it with Arendt on the crucial difference between truth and meaning , the power of outsiderdom , our impulse for self-display , what free will really means , and her beautiful love letters , then revisit Walt Whitman on how literature bolsters democracy and Carl Sagan on why science is a tool of political harmony .

— Published June 15, 2016 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/06/15/lying-in-politics-hannah-arendt/ —

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• Ethical Decision Making

First, lying corrupts the most important quality of my being human: my ability to make free, rational choices. Second, my lies rob others of their freedom to choose rationally.

"I don't dig into people's private lives. I never have." Ross Perot's brief statement on ABC News in July 1992 was meant to end allegations that he secretly investigated his presidential campaign volunteers. The allegations ended, but not the way Perot intended. Within hours, irrefutable evidence appeared that proved Perot had hired others to probe his people's pasts. By the next day, there was no question on anyone's mind: Ross Perot lied.

So what? It wasn't the first time a politician lied and it won't be the last. Sometimes a lie, a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive, seems the perfect response: a brother lies about his sister's where-abouts to the drunken husband threatening to harm her, a doctor tells a depressed patient that he has a 50-50 chance of long-term recovery when she is confident he'll live only six months, a son gives his late mother's estate to the poor after promising to honor her demand that the money be placed in her coffin. When trying to do the right thing in a difficult situation, perfect honesty may seem second best next to values like compassion, respect, and justice. Yet many philosophical and religious traditions have long claimed that rarely, if ever, is a lie permissible. What, then, is the truth about lying?

The philosopher Immanuel Kant said that lying was always morally wrong. He argued that all persons are born with an "intrinsic worth" that he called human dignity. This dignity derives from the fact that humans are uniquely rational agents, capable of freely making their own decisions, setting their own goals, and guiding their conduct by reason. To be human, said Kant, is to have the rational power of free choice; to be ethical, he continued, is to respect that power in oneself and others.

Lies are morally wrong, then, for two reasons. First, lying corrupts the most important quality of my being human: my ability to make free, rational choices. Each lie I tell contradicts the part of me that gives me moral worth. Second, my lies rob others of their freedom to choose rationally. When my lie leads people to decide other than they would had they known the truth, I have harmed their human dignity and autonomy. Kant believed that to value ourselves and others as ends instead of means, we have perfect duties (i.e., no exceptions) to avoid damaging, interfering with, or misusing the ability to make free decisions; in other words - no lying.

A second perspective, virtue ethics, also maintains that lying is morally wrong, though less strictly than Kant. Rather than judge right or wrong behavior on the basis of reason and what people should or should not do, virtue ethicists focus on the development of character or what people should be. Virtues are desirable qualities of persons that predispose them to act in a certain manner. Fairness, for example, is a virtue we may choose to strive toward in pursuit of fulfilling our human potential. In virtue ethics, to be virtuous is to be ethical.

Though the nature of virtue ethics makes it difficult to assess the morality of individual acts, those who advocate this theory generally consider lying wrong because it opposes the virtue of honesty. There is some debate whether a lie told in pursuit of another virtue (e.g., compassion: the brother's lie to his sister's drunken husband is motivated by compassion for her physical safety) is right or wrong. This apparent conflict between virtues is managed by most ethicists through a concept called the unity of the virtues. This doctrine states that the virtuous person, the ideal person we continuously strive to be, cannot achieve one virtue without achieving them all. Therefore, when facing a seeming conflict between virtues, such as a compassionate lie, virtue ethics charges us to imagine what some ideal individual would do and act accordingly, thus making the ideal person's virtues one's own. In essence, virtue ethics finds lying immoral when it is a step away, not toward, the process of becoming the best persons we can be.

According to a third perspective, utilitarian ethics, Kant and virtue ethicists ignore the only test necessary for judging the morality of a lie - balancing the benefits and harms of its consequences. Utilitarians base their reasoning on the claim that actions, including lying, are morally acceptable when the resulting consequences maximize benefit or minimize harm. A lie, therefore, is not always immoral; in fact, when lying is necessary to maximize benefit or minimize harm, it may be immoral not to lie. The challenge in applying utilitarian ethics to everyday decision making, however, is significant: one must correctly estimate the overall consequences of one's actions before making a decision. The following example illustrates what utilitarian decision makers must consider when lying is an option.

Recall the son and his dying mother described earlier. On careful reflection, the son reasons that honoring his mother's request to settle the estate and deposit the money in her coffin cannot be the right thing to do. The money would be wasted or possibly stolen and the poor would be denied an opportunity to benefit. Knowing that his mother would ask someone else to settle her affairs if he declared his true intentions, the son lies by falsely promising to honor her request. Utilitarianism, in this example, supports the son's decision on the determination that the greater good is served (i.e., overall net benefit is achieved) by lying.

Altruistic or noble lies, which specifically intend to benefit someone else, can also be considered morally acceptable by utilitarians. Picture the doctor telling her depressed patient that there is a 50 percent probability that he will recover, when in truth all tests confirm the man has only six months to live. The doctor knows from years of experience that, if she told this type of patient the truth, he would probably fall deeper into depression or possibly commit suicide. With the hope of recovery, though, he will most likely cherish his remaining time. Again, utilitarianism would seem to support the doctor's decision because the greater good is served by her altruistic lie.

While the above reasoning is logical, critics of utilitarianism claim that its practical application in decision making is seriously flawed. People often poorly estimate the consequences of their actions or specifically undervalue or ignore the harmful consequences to society (e.g., mistrust) that their lies cause. Following the examples above, the son's abuse of his mother's faith in him and the doctor's lie undermine the value of trust among all those who learn of the deceits. As trust declines, cynicism spreads, and our overall quality of life drops. In addition, suggesting that people may lie in pursuit of the greater good can lead to a "slippery slope," where the line between cleverly calculated moral justifications and empty excuses for selfish behavior is exceedingly thin. Sliding down the slope eventually kindles morally bankrupt statements (e.g., "Stealing this man's money is okay because I will give some to charity.") Those who disagree with utilitarianism believe that there is potentially great cost in tolerating lies for vague or subjective reasons, including lies in honor of "the greater good."

Critics of utilitarian justifications for lying further note how difficult it is for anyone, even honorable persons, to know that a lie will bring more good than the truth; the consequences of actions are too often unpredictable. Lies frequently assume "lives of their own" and result in consequences that people do not intend or fail to predict. Moreover, it is very difficult for a person to be objective in estimating the good and the harm that his or her lies will produce. We have a vested interest in the lies we tell and an equally vested interest in believing that the world will be better if we lie from one instance to the next. For these reasons, critics claim, lying is morally wrong because we cannot accurately measure lies' benefits and harms.

Clearly, lying is an issue worth examining, as many people believe it is a bigger problem today than it has ever been. A recent Time magazine cover story concluded, "Lies flourish in social uncertainty, when people no longer understand, or agree on, the rules governing their behavior toward one another." Maybe social uncertainty abounds because we are a mixture of Kantians, virtuists, and utilitarians who share no common ground. More likely, the problem is that too few persons adequately consider any ethical perspective when facing a situation that tempts a lie. Either way, it seems that the solution to our dissatisfaction begins with acknowledging the value of ethical reasoning and ends with a commitment to follow through with what we determine is the right thing to do.

Further Reading

Bailey, F. G. The Prevalence of Deceit , Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.

Bok, Sissela. Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life . New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

Greenberg, Michael A. "The Consequences of Truth Telling." JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 266 (1991): 66.

Revell Jean-Francois. The Flight from Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information. New York: Random House Books, 1992.

Thaler, Paul. "The Lies that Bind." The New York Times Magazine 140 (June 9, 1991), 16.

This article was originally published in Issues in Ethics - V. 6, N. 1 Fall 1993. 

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Ethics guide

Lying is probably one of the most common wrong acts that we carry out. Most people would condemn lying except when there's a good reason for it.

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Lying and truth-telling, lying and ethical theory, philosophers on lying, lying under serious threat, other types of lying, lying and medical ethics, page options.

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A liar should have a good memory Quintilian

O what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. Sir Walter Scott, Marmion

Lying is probably one of the most common wrong acts that we carry out (one researcher has said 'lying is an unavoidable part of human nature'), so it's worth spending time thinking about it.

Most people would say that lying is always wrong, except when there's a good reason for it - which means that it's not always wrong!

But even people who think lying is always wrong have a problem... Consider the case where telling a lie would mean that 10 other lies would not be told. If 10 lies are worse than 1 lie then it would seem to be a good thing to tell the first lie, but if lying is always wrong then it's wrong to tell the first lie...

Acknowledgement

Nobody who writes about lying nowadays can do so without acknowledging an enormous debt to this groundbreaking book: Lying: Moral choice in public and private life , by Sisela Bok, 1978.

What is a lie?

Lying is a form of deception, but not all forms of deception are lies.

Lying is giving some information while believing it to be untrue, intending to deceive by doing so.

A lie has three essential features:

• A lie communicates some information
• The liar intends to deceive or mislead
• The liar believes that what they are 'saying' is not true

There are some features that people think are part of lying but aren't actually necessary:

• A lie does not have to give false information
• A lies does not have to be told with a bad (malicious) intention - white lies are an example of lies told with a good intention

This definition says that what makes a lie a lie is that the liar intends to deceive (or at least to mislead) the person they are lying to. It says nothing about whether the information given is true or false.

This definition covers ordinary cases of lying and these two odd cases as well:

• I want the last helping of pie for myself, so I lie to you that there is a worm in it. When I later eat that piece of pie I discover that there really is a worm in it
• the case where nobody is deceived by me because they know that I always tell lies

Lying and statements

Some philosophers believe that lying requires a statement of some sort; they say that the liar must actually speak or write or gesture.

Sisella Bok, author of a major philosophical book on the subject of lying, defines a lie as:

an intentionally deceptive message in the form of a statement

Others stretch the definition to include doing nothing in response to a question, knowing that this will deceive the questioner.

Others include 'living a lie'; those cases where someone behaves in a way that misleads the rest of us as to their true nature.

Why is lying wrong?

There are many reasons why people think lying is wrong; which ones resonate best with you will depend on the way you think about ethics.

• if people generally didn't tell the truth, life would become very difficult, as nobody could be trusted and nothing you heard or read could be trusted - you would have to find everything out for yourself
• an untrusting world is also bad for liars - lying isn't much use if everyone is doing it
• Many people think that it is wrong to treat people as means not ends
• Lies lead people to base their decisions on false information
• Many people think that something should only be accepted as an ethical rule if it can be applied in every case
• Some things are fundamentally bad - lying is one of them
• Good behaviour displays the virtues found in Good People
• Telling lies may become a habit and if a person regularly indulges in one form of wrong-doing they may well become more comfortable with wrong-doing in general
• God gave humanity speech so that they could accurately share their thoughts - lying does the opposite
• When people use language they effectively 'make a contract' to use it in a particular way - one of the clauses of this contract is not to use language deceitfully

What harm do lies do?

Lies obviously hurt the person who is lied to (most of the time), but they can also hurt the liar, and society in general.

The person who is lied to suffers if they don't find out because:

• They can no longer make an informed choice about the issue concerned
• They are not fully informed about their possible courses of action
• They may make a decision that they would not otherwise have made
• They may suffer damage as a result of the lie

The person who is lied to suffers if they do find out because:

• They feel badly treated - deceived and manipulated, and regarded as a person who doesn't deserve the truth
• They see the damage they have suffered
• They doubt their own ability to assess truth and make decisions
• They become untrusting and uncertain and this too damages their ability to make free and informed choices
• They may seek revenge

The liar is hurt because:

• He must act in conformity with the lies
• He may have to tell more lies to avoid being found out
• He has to be wary of those he's lied to
• He will probably suffer harm if he's found out
• If he's found out, people are more likely to lie to him
• If he's found out he's less likely to be believed in future
• His own view of his integrity is damaged
• He may find it easier to lie again or to do other wrongs

Those who tell 'good lies' don't generally suffer these consequences - although they may do so on some occasions.

Society is hurt because:

• The general level of truthfulness falls - other people may be encouraged to lie
• Lying may become a generally accepted practice in some quarters
• It becomes harder for people to trust each other or the institutions of society
• Social cohesion is weakened
• Eventually no-one is able to believe anyone else and society collapses

When is it OK to lie?

The philosopher Sissela Bok put forward a process for testing whether a lie could be justified. She calls it the test of publicity:

The test of publicity asks which lies, if any, would survive the appeal for justification to reasonable persons. Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, 1978

If we were to apply this test as a thought experiment we would bring together a panel of everyone affected by a particular lie - the liar, those lied to and everyone who might be affected by the lie.

We would then put forward all our arguments for telling a particular lie and then ask that 'jury' of relevant and reasonable persons if telling this lie was justified.

But what could we do in the real world?

• First inspect our own conscience and ask whether the lie is justified
• Second, ask friends or colleagues, or people with special ethical knowledge what they think about the particular case
• Thirdly, consult some independent persons about it

This sort of test is most useful when considering what we might call 'public' lying - when an institution is considering just how much truth to tell about a project - perhaps a medical experiment, or a proposed war, or an environmental development.

One executive observed to this writer that a useful test for the justifiability of an action that he was uncertain about was to imagine what the press would write afterwards if they discovered what he had done and compared it to what he had said in advance.

In most cases of personal small scale lying there is no opportunity to do anything more than consult our own conscience - but we should remember that our conscience is usually rather biased in our favour.

A good way of helping our conscience is to ask how we would feel if we were on the receiving end of the lie. It's certainly not foolproof, but it may be helpful.

Bok sets out some factors that should be considered when contemplating a lie:

• Are there some truthful alternatives to using a lie to deal with the particular problem?
• What moral justifications are there for telling this lie - and what counter-arguments can be raised against those justifications?
• What would a public jury of reasonable persons say about this lie?

Different theories of ethics approach lying in different ways. In grossly over-simplified terms, those who follow consequentialist theories are concerned with the consequences of lying and if telling a lie would lead to a better result than telling the truth, they will argue that it is good to tell the lie. They would ask:

‘Would telling the truth or telling a lie bring about the better consequences?’

In contrast, a dutybased ethicist would argue that, even if lying has the better consequences, it is still morally wrong to lie.

Consequentialists (Utilitarians) and lies

Consequentialists assess the rightness or wrongness of doing something by looking at the consequences caused by that act. So if telling a particular lie produces a better result than not telling it, then telling it would be a good thing to do. And if telling a particular lie produces a worse result than not telling it, telling it would be a bad thing to do.

This has a certain commonsense appeal, but it's also quite impractical since it requires a person to work out in advance the likely good and bad consequences of the lie they are about to tell and balance the good against the bad. This is hard to do, because:

• consequences are hard to predict
• how do we decide what is good and what is bad?
• for whom is it good or bad?
• what system of measurement can we use?
• what consequences are relevant?
• how long a time-period should be used in assessing the consequences?
• it requires a person to value everyone involved equally and not to give extra value to their own wishes
• it requires a person to consider the consequences to society in general of telling lies as well as the consequences for those actually involved

So most Utilitarian thinkers don't apply it on a case by case basis but use the theory to come up with some general principles -- perhaps along the lines of:

• it causes harm to people
• it reduces society's general respect for truth;
• but there are some cases - white lies or mercy lies - where it may be OK to tell lies.

This is an example of 'rule-utilitarianism'; considering every single action separately is 'act-Utilitarianism'.

These two forms of Utilitarianism could lead to different results: An act-Utilitarian might say that telling a lie in a particular case did lead to the best results for everyone involved and for society as a whole, while a rule-Utilitarian might argue that since lying made society a less happy place, it was wrong to tell lies, even in this particular case.

Deontologists

Deontologists base their moral thinking on general universal laws, and not on the results of particular acts. (The word comes from from the Greek word deon , meaning duty.)

An act is therefore either a right or a wrong act, regardless of whether it produces good or bad consequences.

Deontologists don't always agree on how we arrive at 'moral laws', or on what such laws are, but one generally accepted moral law is 'do not tell lies'.

And if that is the law then lying is always wrong - even if telling the truth would produce far better consequences: so if I lie to a terrorist death squad about the whereabouts of the people that they’re hunting, and so save their lives, I have in fact done wrong, because I broke the rule that says lying is wrong.

Most of us would accept that an unbreakable rule against lying would be unworkable, but a more sophisticated rule (perhaps one with a list of exceptions) might be something we could live with.

Virtue ethics

Virtue ethics looks at what good (virtuous) people do. If honesty is a virtue in the particular system involved, then lying is a bad thing.

The difficulty with this approach comes when a virtuous person tells a lie as a result of another virtue (compassion perhaps). The solution might be to consider what an ideal person would have done in the particular circumstances.

Immanuel Kant

Some philosophers, most famously the German Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), believed that that lying was always wrong.

He based this on his general principle that we should treat each human being as an end in itself, and never as a mere means.

Lying to someone is not treating them as an end in themselves, but merely as a means for the liar to get what they want.

Kant also taught 'Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation.' This roughly means that something is only good if it could become a universal law.

If there was a universal law that it was generally OK to tell lies then life would rapidly become very difficult as everyone would feel free to lie or tell the truth as they chose, it would be impossible to take any statement seriously without corroboration, and society would collapse.

St. Augustine

Every liar says the opposite of what he thinks in his heart, with purpose to deceive. St Augustine, The Enchiridon

Christian theologian St. Augustine (354-430) taught that lying was always wrong, but accepted that this would be very difficult to live up to and that in real life people needed a get-out clause.

St Augustine said that:

• God gave human beings speech so that they could make their thoughts known to each other; therefore using speech to deceive people is a sin, because it's using speech to do the opposite of what God intended
• The true sin of lying is contained in the desire to deceive

Augustine believed that some lies could be pardoned, and that there were in fact occasions when lying would be the right thing to do.

He grouped lies into 8 classes, depending on how difficult it was to pardon them. Here's his list, with the least forgivable lies at the top:

• Lies told in teaching religion
• Lies which hurt someone and help nobody
• Lies which hurt someone but benefit someone else
• Lies told for the pleasure of deceiving someone
• Lies told to please others in conversation
• Lies which hurt nobody and benefit someone
• Lies which hurt nobody and benefit someone by keeping open the possibility of their repentance
• Lies which hurt nobody and protect a person from physical 'defilement'

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas also thought that all lies were wrong, but that there was a hierarchy of lies and those at the bottom could be forgiven. His list was:

• Malicious lies are mortal sins
• These are pardonable

The reason for lying that gets most sympathy from people is lying because something terrible will happen if you don't lie. Examples include lying to protect a murderer's intended victim and lying to save oneself from death or serious injury.

These lies are thought less bad than other lies because they prevent a greater harm occurring; they are basically like other actions of justified self-defence or defence of an innocent victim.

The reasons why we think lies in such situations are acceptable are:

• The good consequences of the lie are much greater than the bad consequences
• Such lies are told to protect innocent persons who would otherwise suffer injustice
• Such lies are told to prevent irreversible harm being done
• Such situations are very rare, so lying in them doesn't damage the general presumption that it's wrong to lie

Since such lies are often told in emergencies, another justification is that the person telling the lie often has not time to think of any alternative course of action.

Threatening situations don't just occur as emergencies; there can be long-term threat situations where lying will give a person a greater chance of survival. In the Gulag or in concentration camps prisoners can gain an advantage by lying about their abilities, the misbehaviour of fellow-prisoners, whether they've been fed, and so on. In a famine lying about whether you have any food hidden away may be vital for the survival of your family.

Lying to enemies

When two countries are at war, the obligation to tell the truth is thought to be heavily reduced and deliberate deception is generally accepted as part of the way each side will try to send its opponent in the wrong direction, or fool the enemy into not taking particular actions.

In the same way each side accepts that there will be spies and that spies will lie under interrogation (this acceptance of spying doesn't benefit the individual spies much, as they are usually shot at the end of the day).

There are two main moral arguments for lying to enemies:

• Enemies do not deserve the same treatment as friends or neutrals, because enemies intend to do us harm and can't grumble if we harm them in return by lying to them
• Lying to enemies will prevent harm to many people, so the good consequences outweigh the bad ones.

Mental reservations

This legalistic device divides a statement into two parts: the first part is misleading, the two parts together are true - however only the first part is said aloud, the second part is a 'mental reservation'.

Here are some examples:

• "I have never cheated on my wife" (except last Thursday)
• "I did not steal the cakes" (on Thursday afternoon)
• "I did not touch the painting" (but my glove did)

This device seems outrageous to the modern mind, but a few centuries ago it was much used.

One common occasion for mental reservations was in court, when a person had sworn an oath to tell the truth and expected God to punish them if they lied.

If they'd stolen some sheep on Tuesday they could safely tell the court "I did not steal those sheep" as long as they added in their mind "on Monday". Since God was believed to know every thought, God would hear the mental reservation as well as the public statement and therefore would not have been lied to.

Sissela Bok says that this device is recommended to doctors by one textbook. If a feverish patient, for example, asks what his temperature is, the doctor is advised to answer "your temperature is normal today" while making the mental reservation that it is normal for a person in the patient's precise physical condition.

Lying to those with no right to the truth

The Dutch philosopher and lawyer Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) taught that a lie is not really wrong if the person being lied to has no right to the truth.

This stemmed from his idea that what made a wrong or unjust action wrong was that it violated someone else's rights. If someone has no right to the truth, their rights aren't violated if they're told a lie.

This argument would seem to teach that it's not an unethical lie to tell a mugger that you have no money (although it is a very unwise thing to do), and it is not an unethical lie to tell a death squad that you don't know where their potential victim is hiding.

In practice, most people would regard this as a very legalistic and 'small print' sort of argument and not think it much of a justification for telling lies, except in certain extreme cases that can probably be justified on other grounds.

Lying to liars

If someone lies to you, are you entitled to lie to them in return? Has the liar lost the right to be told the truth? Human behaviour suggests that we do feel less obliged to be truthful to liars than to people who deal with us honestly.

Most moral philosophers would say that you are not justified in lying to another person because they have lied to you.

From an ethical point of view, the first thing is that a lie is still a lie - even if told to a liar.

Secondly, while the liar may be regarded as having lost the right to be told the truth, society as a whole still retains some sort of right that its members should use language truthfully.

But is it a pardonable lie? The old maxim 'two wrongs don't make a right' suggests that it isn't, and it's clear that even if the liar has lost their right to be told the truth, all the other reasons why lying is bad are still valid.

But there is a real change in the ethics of the situation; this is not that a lie to a liar is forgivable, but that the liar himself is not in a morally strong position to complain about being lied to.

But - and it's a big 'but' - even this probably only applies in a particular context - if I tell you lies about the number of children I have, that doesn't entitle you to lie to me about the time of the next train to London, although it would make it very hard for me to complain if you were to lie to me about the number of children in your family.

Nor does it justify lying to someone because you know they are an habitual liar - once again all the other arguments against lying are still valid.

Mutual agreed deception

There are cases where two people (or groups of people) willingly engage in a mutual deception, because they think it will benefit them. Sisela Bok puts it like this:

Such deception can resemble a game where both partners know the rules and play by them. It resembles, then, a pact of sorts, whereby what each can do, what each gains by the arrangement, is clearly understood. Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, 1978

An example of this is a negotiation in which both parties will lie to each other ('that's my best price', 'I'll have to leave it then') in a way that everyone involved understands.

Lies that don't deceive are not sinful lies...or are they?

If both parties know that the liar's statement is NOT intended to be taken as a definitive and important statement of the truth then it may not count as a sinful lie, because there's no intention to deceive.

There are many cases where no reasonable person expects what is said to them to be genuinely truthful.

That may let us off the hook for things like:

• Flattery: 'you look lovely'
• Gratitude: 'that's just what I wanted'
• Formal language conventions: 'sincerely yours', 'pleased to meet you'
• Bargaining: 'my best price is £500'
• Generalisation: 'it always rains in Manchester'
• If believing the advert might lead to bad consequences - for example in medical advertising - this would not count as a guilt-free lie.
• Jokes: 'there was an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman'
• Unpredictable situations: 'it won't rain today'
• Sporting tips: 'Pegleg is unbeatable in the 3:30 race'
• False excuses: 'he's in a meeting'
• Conjuring tricks: 'There's nothing up my sleeve'

It's not always easy to see the difference between these statements and white lies.

Incidentally the Ethics web team disagreed amongst themselves as to the status of lies that don't deceive - your thoughts are very welcome.

A white lie is a lie that is not intended to harm the person being lied to - indeed it's often intended to benefit them by making them feel good, or preventing their feelings being hurt.

For example, I go to a dinner party and my hostess asks how I like the dish she's prepared. The true answer happens to be 'I think it tastes horrible' but if I say 'it's delicious' that's a white lie. Most people would approve of that white lie and would regard telling the truth as a bad thing to do. (But this lie does do some harm - the hostess may feel encouraged to make that dish again, and so future guests will have to suffer from it.)

White lies usually include most of these features:

• they are not intended to harm the person lied to
• they are not intended to harm anyone else
• they don't actually harm anyone (or only do trivial harm)
• the lie is about something morally trivial
• they aren't told so often that they devalue what you say

White lies are not a totally good thing:

• the person being lied to is deprived of information that they might find useful even if they found it unpleasant
• the person telling the lies may find it easier to lie in future and they may come to blur the boundary between white lies and more blameworthy lies

White lies weaken the general presumption that lying is wrong and may make it easier for a person to tell lies that are intended to harm someone, or may make it easier to avoid telling truths that need to be told - for example, when giving a performance evaluation it is more comfortable not to tell someone that their work is sub-standard.

Health professionals have to reconcile the general presumption against telling lies with these other principles of medical ethics. While healthcare professionals are as concerned to tell the truth as any other group of people, there are cases where the principles of medical ethics can conflict with the presumption against lying.

The fundamental principles of medical ethics are:

• Respect for autonomy: acknowledging that patients can make decisions and giving them the information they need to make sensible and informed choices
• Doing no harm: doing the minimum harm possible to the patient
• Beneficence: balancing the risks, costs and benefits of medical action so as to produce the best result for the patient
• Justice: using limited medical resources fairly, legally and in accordance with human rights principles

Telling the truth is not an explicitly stated principle of most systems of medical ethics, but it is clearly implied by the principle of respect for autonomy - if a patient is lied to, they can't make a reasoned and informed choice, because they don't have the information they need to do so.

Respect for patient autonomy is particularly important in the case of people who are terminally ill, as they are likely to be particularly vulnerable to manipulation of the truth.

So why might healthcare professionals want to lie 'for the good of patients', and what are the arguments against this sort of lying?

• Lying deprives the patient of the chance to decide whether they want the treatment - highly intrusive treatment near the end of life may prolong life, but at greatly reduced quality, and the patient, if properly informed, might decline such treatment
• Such information should be given in a way that minimizes harm -- the patient should be appropriately prepared to receive the information and given proper support after being given bad news
• Surveys suggest that patients don't in general go into a severe decline or choose to kill themselves
• Respect for autonomy requires the patient to be given the chance to consider all legal courses of action, no matter how undesirable other people may think they are
• Lying deprives the patient of the opportunity to take meaningful decisions about their life, based on accurate medical information
• The patient may realise that the symptoms they experience and the way their disease progresses don't fit what they have been told. They then experience all the bad consequences of being lied to
• Surveys suggest that the majority of patients want to be told the truth, even if it's bad
• It's the duty of the professional to communicate the truth in a way that each particular patient can understand, and to check that they really have understood it. (Honesty and intelligibility are particularly important when obtaining patient consent for a particular treatment or procedure.)
• Many patients don't go into denial
• The patient still has the choice to go into denial
• Denial may be an important stage of coming to terms with the inevitable; the patient should not be deprived of the chance of working through it and dealing with their life-situation
• The professional should give the patient the range and likelihood of possible outcomes
• This seems more for the benefit of the doctor than the patient
• Putting proper patient support systems in place will deal with this

Obtaining informed consent

Healthcare professionals must tell the truth and make sure that the patient understands it properly when they are obtaining the patient's consent to a procedure or treatment.

If the patient is not told the truth they cannot give 'informed consent' to the proposed course of action.

A patient can only give informed consent if they know such things as the truth about their illness, what form the treatment will take, how it will benefit them, the probabilities of the possible outcomes, what they will experience during and after the treatment, the risks and side-effects, and the qualifications and track-record of those involved in the treatment.

There is also evidence that patients do better after treatment if they have a full understanding of both the treatment and the illness, and have been allowed to take some participation and control of the course of their treatment.

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• Abortion , Lying

Why Lying is Always Wrong

• February 14, 2011

Christopher Kaczor and several others have been gracious enough to respond to my essay on the tactics of Live Action with a number of criticisms, many of which deserve a response. For convenience, we may divide the major objections into three sets.

The first set of criticisms calls into question whether the behaviors and utterances of the Live Action “actors” were really lies. First, some think a false assertion is a lie only when told to those with a right to the truth. Second, some think that the Live Action actors made, or perhaps could have made, no false assertions.

The second set of criticisms concerns whether it is always wrong to lie; many critics deny just this, for one or more of the following reasons.

• One view would have it that lying is not wrong in war. A presupposition of this view, which is defended by Joseph Bottum , is that the pro-life movement is at war with Planned Parenthood and other purveyors of abortion.
• A second view holds that sometimes lying is defensible by double-effect type reasoning: the harms of lying must, on this view, not be intended. With this objection we get to the heart of the ethical matter: what are the harms of lying, and are they essential to the intention of someone who deliberately lies or not?
• A third view is that lying is permissible in order to save a human life; on this view, the prohibition on lying is simply not absolute.
• A fourth criticism concerns my claim that to lie is to fail in love to those lied to; some misunderstand this as a claim that what I call for is “gentleness” towards wrongdoers, perhaps to the exclusion of punishment, but I trust my claim that truthful correction of wrongdoing is genuinely loving suffices to show that I do not hold that view. But others argue that to deceive is not as such unloving, and that the lies told to Planned Parenthood workers were in fact to their good.

The third set of criticisms, finally, concern the consequences of my view. Many critics have claimed that if it is always and everywhere wrong to lie, then such practices as undercover police (or journalistic) work, and some forms of espionage are also wrong.

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The Live Action “Actors” Lied

Let us begin, then, with the first set of objections. Was there really no lying done in the Live Action “stings”? Christopher Kaczor cites an early, and subsequently amended, version of the Catholic Catechism which defines lying as not telling the truth to “someone who has the right to know the truth” (CCC 2483). The quoted phrase is omitted in subsequent versions and for good reason. Consider the following scenario: I spend $500 of family money on gambling. My wife has a right to know what happened to this money; my ten-year old son does not. The “right to know” view would have it that I only lie to my wife when I assert to both that I gave the money away to charity. This seems clearly wrong, and points us towards the Catechism’s amended definition: “To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error.” On this view, what is essential to a lie is that an agent assert, through speech or action, something he believes to be false; here is the nature of the lie, and thus here also is where the wrong must be found: not in a failure to respect an agent’s “right” to the truth.

But perhaps the Live Action agents did not actually make false assertions? A perusal of the transcripts suggests the implausibility of this view. In the Bronx Planned Parenthood Transcript, for example, the “pimp” says, “Now, also, so we’re involved in sex work, so we have some other girls that we manage and work with that they’re going to need testing as well.” While these seem like straightforward lies, some have suggested that “sex work” here is ambiguous, and that the actors mean something like “work that will end the sex trade.” I can only say that this view strains credulity.

Others have claimed that Live Action did, or could, work only with “hypotheticals”: “what would you say if…” sorts of questions. But consider again the Catechism’s definition of a lie, which suggests that one can lie in action as well as in speech, by using one’s actions—including, presumably, one’s personal presentation—against the truth, in order to lead someone into error. And this too the Live Action “actors” surely did: they were dressed and acted as pimps and prostitutes, not because this was how they usually dressed or acted, but precisely to convey information to the Planned Parenthood workers about what they were , information that they also conveyed in speech: “we’re involved in sex work.” So, it is not the case that they worked only in hypothetical questions, and it is unclear whether, in practice, a hypotheticals-only approach would, in fact, serve their ends.

So I believe we should conclude without doubt that the “actors” in the Live Action videos did indeed lie. This obviously raises the next crucial question: were they wrong to do so?

Lying is Always Wrong

As a preliminary point, those who think, for intellectual or religious reasons, that the theological and philosophical tradition of Western Christianity has evidential value should be much more impressed with the agreement between Augustine, Aquinas, the Council of Trent, and the updated Catechism, all of whom hold that the norm against lying is absolute, than with the secondary tradition which admittedly also exists within Christianity that holds that lying is occasionally permitted. Catholics in particular have very good reason for taking the updated Catechism’s view to be normative for them: “By its very nature, lying is to be condemned” (CCC 2485). This judgment reaffirms a claim from the Catechism of the Council of Trent: “In a word, lies of every sort are prohibited.” But we seek here some further understanding of why this unequivocal condemnation might be entirely reasonable.

The first objection was, to recall, that lying is permissible in war. In fact, the authorities mentioned in the previous paragraph did not hold this: Aquinas, for example, condemned lying in war, but he allowed that military feints might be carried out. In a military context, it is assumed (as it is in poker, and in the theater) that what is done will not always have the significance it otherwise might, since soldiers have good reason for preventing the enemy from inferring from what they do what their true plans are. Thus no false assertion is made by the feint. But if lying is always and everywhere wrong, these possibilities do not serve as counterexamples: they are not themselves lies.

More importantly here, however, it is crucial to point out that the pro-life movement is not, in any but the most distantly metaphorical sense, “at war” with Planned Parenthood. To take such a claim strictly would raise unsolvable problems in terms of just war thought: who, for example, is the legitimate authority that has tasked Lila Rose with this work? And it would justify untenable conclusions, for if anything is justified in war, it is the use of arms. Yet the pro-life movement has, rightly in my view, converged on an understanding that the use of arms to stop abortion is not right: it provides a counter-witness to the value of life; it constitutes an unjustified attack on our nation’s overall legal structure; and it is unlikely either to bring peace or to result in a proportionate balance of benefits over harms. The appeal to war is thus a non-starter.

Perhaps, as some suggest, lying could be justified via double effect? As I noted, this question gets us to the heart of the matter, for double effect reasoning is appropriate when there is a moral principle forbidding the intentional bringing about of some harm. Some actions, which bring about that kind of harm nevertheless can be justified because the harm is not intended, but merely foreseen. Thus, assuming that the taking of human life is a harm, and that it is always wrong to intend that harm, nevertheless, many moralists defend some actions which result in death, because the death is not intended.

Now: what are the harms of lying? To answer this question we must understand something of the goodness of truthful communication, for it is that goodness that is, presumably, absent in lying. And that goodness is, I shall suggest, multiple.

In truthful communication, persons disclose, or reveal, reality in two dimensions. Consider the common case of being asked by a stranger for directions. He does not know how to get to a theater, and you provide him directions: you tell him where to go. In this example, your honest communication reveals to him the way the world is, to his benefit. Without such revelation, the truth would be unavailable to our stranger, as would all the other goods that would be available by means of the truth, such as the stranger’s getting to the theater in time to meet his friends and enjoy the show.

But truthful communication also discloses something personal: in affirming that things are this way, not that , not only do you reveal the world to the stranger, but you reveal yourself as well: this , not that , is how you take things to be. When the stranger hears the directions, he does not just hear words; because of the personal dimension of communication, he hears you . And this disclosure’s personal nature is responsible for a well-known aspect of such small gestures of kindness to a stranger as providing accurate directions: to disclose oneself to another through honest communication is a primordial act of the creation of a community, a community which, in this case, is short-lived, but no less real for that.

It is this disclosing aspect of language that has made speech such a natural analogue, in the work of John Paul II, to the self-giving by which spouses enter into marital communion with one another—hence his image of the “language of the body.” And perhaps we can even work backwards from the mutual giving of selves in the body, which characterizes marital union, to the wrong of lying, by way of the following analogy.

Imagine the sexual receptivity of a wife towards her husband that conceals an attitude that is other than one of self-donation; such a concealment would be both a mutilation of the relationship as physically embodied in the union, and of the spouse whose actions are at odds with her inner thoughts and attitudes. More concretely, consider a spouse who fantasizes during marital intercourse about another, or thinks only of his or her own pleasure in the act, or who wishes he was unmarried. Such a spouse is damaging the relationship, but also damaging him or herself by dividing his or her self into the physical (but only illusory) giver of self, and the inner lover of self.

This is indeed quite similar to the wrong of lying. In a lie, a person divides his or her self, making her outer person to say one thing, while her “inner” self believes something else. “Inner” and “outer” are somewhat, but only somewhat, metaphorical here. One’s full self is not, in fact, disclosed just by one’s physical being in the world; it remains for one to communicate much of who and what one is to others in acts and words. When that disclosure is truthful, inner and outer are brought into harmony; when dishonest, inner and outer are sundered.

Could this division be anything but a harm to a person? We show in many ways the value of being able to present a “true face” to the world, as when we rebel at restrictions on freedom of expression, or resent an ideological pressure that prevents us from speaking freely, or when, because of our desire not to harm, we succumb to pressure and say what someone else wants to hear. We respect those who are what they seem, and who speak straightforwardly and with candor: we admire their integrity , precisely that which we see damaged in one who cannot, or will not, speak his mind.

So here is the initial harm of the lie: it divides the inner and outer self, damaging the agent’s integrity; and integrity is a great good. (I expand on this argument in my article in the American Journal of Jurisprudence “ Lying: The Integrity Approach .”)

But, as the example of the stranger in need of directions indicated, truth in self-disclosure just is the primordial means by which we establish community with another; and the forming of community—the entering into communion—with others just is what it means to love another (thus, naturally enough, as there are many forms of communion, there are many forms of love, and not all are equally appropriate to each person). But this too is damaged in the lie. The essential disclosure of persons to other persons that brings them into a unity is impossible on the foundation of dishonest communication. That communication does not disclose; it seeks to conceal.

There is thus a very strong connection between the virtue of honesty and both the integrity of the self and the unity of persons in love, and a very strong connection between dishonesty—lies—and disharmony of the self and disharmony with others. Of course, the specific truths that are communicated often can play a further role in the building up of community with others, because those truths are, as again the example of the lost stranger showed, essential to the pursuit of many other goods. Yet some truths are not essential in these ways, and yet others could be harmful, so there is no obligation to say all that one knows to be true. Such a duty is not implied by an obligation never to lie.

We now have the resources to make quick work of the central objections to the claim that it is always wrong to lie. Against the claim that double effect reasoning could play a role, for example, we see the following difference between lying and using lethal force: intending death is not intrinsic to the use of force and thus can be accepted as a side effect, but the division of the self that just is the destruction of one’s integrity is intrinsic to the telling of a lie. This harm just is part of what anyone who sets himself to assert what he does not believe to be true intends.

We thus see also why the prohibition on lying is absolute: the goods of integrity and community are fundamental goods, and in themselves, they are nothing but goods, for human persons. In themselves, they thus give us only reason to pursue and promote them for ourselves and others. Things would be different if integrity or community were good only in some respects, but not in others; we would then have reason to seek them, and reason to avoid or prevent them; but just in themselves, they are goods. Action directed at the destruction of one of these goods would thus be, as such, nothing but harmful to persons, and thus wrong. And the prohibition against lying gives witness to this. In speech and action, these goods are never to be intentionally damaged , and as we have seen, a lie always involves such intentional damage.

Of course, most lies are not just intentional damagings of the liar’s integrity, but damagings for the sake of some further good. Yet, since the damage just as such gives no reason to carry out the lie, such a choice could only be justified if the good sought were a greater good than the harm caused by the lie. Such an idea is at the heart of the reasoning of those who believe it permissible to lie to save a life. The good of life must be greater than the good of personal integrity on such an account.

Yet we have no reason to think such weighing is possible; by what measure is there more good in life than integrity? And if that is how the scales come down, than ought not a man to foreswear his faith, or abandon the truth, to save his life? Yet if the weighing is not possible, then the conclusion is clear: there can be no “exceptions” to the norm against intentionally lying, even for serious reasons.

Finally, I believe I have shown why all lies are unloving. It is not because they are not sufficiently gentle, or because they cause hurt feelings, or lose jobs. It is because they are incompatible in the deepest way with a will towards communion with others, which must always be founded on truth, both generally speaking (for falsehood does indeed bring with it many pernicious consequences for a community), and, more specifically, the truth of persons. I have no doubt that the actions of Lila Rose and her Live Action colleagues are ultimately motivated by love; but in utilizing lies and deceit, they have built on a treacherous foundation, thus threatening the entire construction.

Many of our Current Practices are Wrong, Too

The truth that all lies are wrong and that they must all be avoided is hard, no less for polities than for individuals. And this brings us to the final set of objections, which I will here address only briefly. Those objections concerned the practices of undercover work, espionage work, and other forms of journalistic, police, and governmental work that might require lying. Some have expressed surprise that these practices should be called into question; yet Augustine felt it necessary to address the morality of lying precisely in order to stop the practice of Christians infiltrating heretical sects for the defense of the faith; so questioning the legitimacy of undercover work is a very old part of the Christian tradition (I have argued against such work in a philosophical vein in my book Biomedical Research and Beyond: Expanding the Ethics of Inquiry ).

The position I have argued for here could not easily be adhered to. And a firm commitment, by any person, or any group, to avoid all lies would inevitably have radical consequences. For there is no doubt that we are surrounded by lies, by deceit, by dishonesty and that each one of us drinks of this cup too often, even in a day’s work. We would lose what we might take to be essential tools of daily life, both personally and politically, were lies taken away from us.

Yet these are only consequences of my view, they are not themselves arguments, and anyone who believes, as members of the great Abrahamic religions do, that the Father of Lies is at the root of much evil, must make a constant struggle not to let their commitment to truth become obscured by the demands of the fallen world. That we have become conformed in our social practice to lies as an essential part of the defense of the realm, and for the protection of citizens, just as in our personal lives, is a fact; indeed, this conformity is, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, the very demand which evil and violence make upon us: “obedience to lies and daily participation in lies.” But this participation is neither an inevitability, nor, in my view, a reflection of what is genuinely demanded by truth and love.

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Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Truth — Is It Better to Tell the Truth or Lie

Is It Better to Tell The Truth Or Lie

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Need to defend your opinion on an issue? Argumentative essays are one of the most popular types of essays you’ll write in school. They combine persuasive arguments with fact-based research, and, when done well, can be powerful tools for making someone agree with your point of view. If you’re struggling to write an argumentative essay or just want to learn more about them, seeing examples can be a big help.

After giving an overview of this type of essay, we provide three argumentative essay examples. After each essay, we explain in-depth how the essay was structured, what worked, and where the essay could be improved. We end with tips for making your own argumentative essay as strong as possible.

What Is an Argumentative Essay?

An argumentative essay is an essay that uses evidence and facts to support the claim it’s making. Its purpose is to persuade the reader to agree with the argument being made.

A good argumentative essay will use facts and evidence to support the argument, rather than just the author’s thoughts and opinions. For example, say you wanted to write an argumentative essay stating that Charleston, SC is a great destination for families. You couldn’t just say that it’s a great place because you took your family there and enjoyed it. For it to be an argumentative essay, you need to have facts and data to support your argument, such as the number of child-friendly attractions in Charleston, special deals you can get with kids, and surveys of people who visited Charleston as a family and enjoyed it. The first argument is based entirely on feelings, whereas the second is based on evidence that can be proven.

The standard five paragraph format is common, but not required, for argumentative essays. These essays typically follow one of two formats: the Toulmin model or the Rogerian model.

• The Toulmin model is the most common. It begins with an introduction, follows with a thesis/claim, and gives data and evidence to support that claim. This style of essay also includes rebuttals of counterarguments.
• The Rogerian model analyzes two sides of an argument and reaches a conclusion after weighing the strengths and weaknesses of each.

3 Good Argumentative Essay Examples + Analysis

Below are three examples of argumentative essays, written by yours truly in my school days, as well as analysis of what each did well and where it could be improved.

Argumentative Essay Example 1

Proponents of this idea state that it will save local cities and towns money because libraries are expensive to maintain. They also believe it will encourage more people to read because they won’t have to travel to a library to get a book; they can simply click on what they want to read and read it from wherever they are. They could also access more materials because libraries won’t have to buy physical copies of books; they can simply rent out as many digital copies as they need.

However, it would be a serious mistake to replace libraries with tablets. First, digital books and resources are associated with less learning and more problems than print resources. A study done on tablet vs book reading found that people read 20-30% slower on tablets, retain 20% less information, and understand 10% less of what they read compared to people who read the same information in print. Additionally, staring too long at a screen has been shown to cause numerous health problems, including blurred vision, dizziness, dry eyes, headaches, and eye strain, at much higher instances than reading print does. People who use tablets and mobile devices excessively also have a higher incidence of more serious health issues such as fibromyalgia, shoulder and back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and muscle strain. I know that whenever I read from my e-reader for too long, my eyes begin to feel tired and my neck hurts. We should not add to these problems by giving people, especially young people, more reasons to look at screens.

Second, it is incredibly narrow-minded to assume that the only service libraries offer is book lending. Libraries have a multitude of benefits, and many are only available if the library has a physical location. Some of these benefits include acting as a quiet study space, giving people a way to converse with their neighbors, holding classes on a variety of topics, providing jobs, answering patron questions, and keeping the community connected. One neighborhood found that, after a local library instituted community events such as play times for toddlers and parents, job fairs for teenagers, and meeting spaces for senior citizens, over a third of residents reported feeling more connected to their community. Similarly, a Pew survey conducted in 2015 found that nearly two-thirds of American adults feel that closing their local library would have a major impact on their community. People see libraries as a way to connect with others and get their questions answered, benefits tablets can’t offer nearly as well or as easily.

While replacing libraries with tablets may seem like a simple solution, it would encourage people to spend even more time looking at digital screens, despite the myriad issues surrounding them. It would also end access to many of the benefits of libraries that people have come to rely on. In many areas, libraries are such an important part of the community network that they could never be replaced by a simple object.

The author begins by giving an overview of the counter-argument, then the thesis appears as the first sentence in the third paragraph. The essay then spends the rest of the paper dismantling the counter argument and showing why readers should believe the other side.

What this essay does well:

• Although it’s a bit unusual to have the thesis appear fairly far into the essay, it works because, once the thesis is stated, the rest of the essay focuses on supporting it since the counter-argument has already been discussed earlier in the paper.
• This essay includes numerous facts and cites studies to support its case. By having specific data to rely on, the author’s argument is stronger and readers will be more inclined to agree with it.
• For every argument the other side makes, the author makes sure to refute it and follow up with why her opinion is the stronger one. In order to make a strong argument, it’s important to dismantle the other side, which this essay does this by making the author's view appear stronger.
• This is a shorter paper, and if it needed to be expanded to meet length requirements, it could include more examples and go more into depth with them, such as by explaining specific cases where people benefited from local libraries.
• Additionally, while the paper uses lots of data, the author also mentions their own experience with using tablets. This should be removed since argumentative essays focus on facts and data to support an argument, not the author’s own opinion or experiences. Replacing that with more data on health issues associated with screen time would strengthen the essay.
• Some of the points made aren't completely accurate , particularly the one about digital books being cheaper. It actually often costs a library more money to rent out numerous digital copies of a book compared to buying a single physical copy. Make sure in your own essay you thoroughly research each of the points and rebuttals you make, otherwise you'll look like you don't know the issue that well.

Argumentative Essay Example 2

There are multiple drugs available to treat malaria, and many of them work well and save lives, but malaria eradication programs that focus too much on them and not enough on prevention haven’t seen long-term success in Sub-Saharan Africa. A major program to combat malaria was WHO’s Global Malaria Eradication Programme. Started in 1955, it had a goal of eliminating malaria in Africa within the next ten years. Based upon previously successful programs in Brazil and the United States, the program focused mainly on vector control. This included widely distributing chloroquine and spraying large amounts of DDT. More than one billion dollars was spent trying to abolish malaria. However, the program suffered from many problems and in 1969, WHO was forced to admit that the program had not succeeded in eradicating malaria. The number of people in Sub-Saharan Africa who contracted malaria as well as the number of malaria deaths had actually increased over 10% during the time the program was active.

One of the major reasons for the failure of the project was that it set uniform strategies and policies. By failing to consider variations between governments, geography, and infrastructure, the program was not nearly as successful as it could have been. Sub-Saharan Africa has neither the money nor the infrastructure to support such an elaborate program, and it couldn’t be run the way it was meant to. Most African countries don't have the resources to send all their people to doctors and get shots, nor can they afford to clear wetlands or other malaria prone areas. The continent’s spending per person for eradicating malaria was just a quarter of what Brazil spent. Sub-Saharan Africa simply can’t rely on a plan that requires more money, infrastructure, and expertise than they have to spare.

Additionally, the widespread use of chloroquine has created drug resistant parasites which are now plaguing Sub-Saharan Africa. Because chloroquine was used widely but inconsistently, mosquitoes developed resistance, and chloroquine is now nearly completely ineffective in Sub-Saharan Africa, with over 95% of mosquitoes resistant to it. As a result, newer, more expensive drugs need to be used to prevent and treat malaria, which further drives up the cost of malaria treatment for a region that can ill afford it.

Instead of developing plans to treat malaria after the infection has incurred, programs should focus on preventing infection from occurring in the first place. Not only is this plan cheaper and more effective, reducing the number of people who contract malaria also reduces loss of work/school days which can further bring down the productivity of the region.

One of the cheapest and most effective ways of preventing malaria is to implement insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs).  These nets provide a protective barrier around the person or people using them. While untreated bed nets are still helpful, those treated with insecticides are much more useful because they stop mosquitoes from biting people through the nets, and they help reduce mosquito populations in a community, thus helping people who don’t even own bed nets.  Bed nets are also very effective because most mosquito bites occur while the person is sleeping, so bed nets would be able to drastically reduce the number of transmissions during the night. In fact, transmission of malaria can be reduced by as much as 90% in areas where the use of ITNs is widespread. Because money is so scarce in Sub-Saharan Africa, the low cost is a great benefit and a major reason why the program is so successful. Bed nets cost roughly 2 USD to make, last several years, and can protect two adults. Studies have shown that, for every 100-1000 more nets are being used, one less child dies of malaria. With an estimated 300 million people in Africa not being protected by mosquito nets, there’s the potential to save three million lives by spending just a few dollars per person.

Reducing the number of people who contract malaria would also reduce poverty levels in Africa significantly, thus improving other aspects of society like education levels and the economy. Vector control is more effective than treatment strategies because it means fewer people are getting sick. When fewer people get sick, the working population is stronger as a whole because people are not put out of work from malaria, nor are they caring for sick relatives. Malaria-afflicted families can typically only harvest 40% of the crops that healthy families can harvest. Additionally, a family with members who have malaria spends roughly a quarter of its income treatment, not including the loss of work they also must deal with due to the illness. It’s estimated that malaria costs Africa 12 billion USD in lost income every year. A strong working population creates a stronger economy, which Sub-Saharan Africa is in desperate need of.  

This essay begins with an introduction, which ends with the thesis (that malaria eradication plans in Sub-Saharan Africa should focus on prevention rather than treatment). The first part of the essay lays out why the counter argument (treatment rather than prevention) is not as effective, and the second part of the essay focuses on why prevention of malaria is the better path to take.

• The thesis appears early, is stated clearly, and is supported throughout the rest of the essay. This makes the argument clear for readers to understand and follow throughout the essay.
• There’s lots of solid research in this essay, including specific programs that were conducted and how successful they were, as well as specific data mentioned throughout. This evidence helps strengthen the author’s argument.
• The author makes a case for using expanding bed net use over waiting until malaria occurs and beginning treatment, but not much of a plan is given for how the bed nets would be distributed or how to ensure they’re being used properly. By going more into detail of what she believes should be done, the author would be making a stronger argument.
• The introduction of the essay does a good job of laying out the seriousness of the problem, but the conclusion is short and abrupt. Expanding it into its own paragraph would give the author a final way to convince readers of her side of the argument.

Argumentative Essay Example 3

There are many ways payments could work. They could be in the form of a free-market approach, where athletes are able to earn whatever the market is willing to pay them, it could be a set amount of money per athlete, or student athletes could earn income from endorsements, autographs, and control of their likeness, similar to the way top Olympians earn money.

Proponents of the idea believe that, because college athletes are the ones who are training, participating in games, and bringing in audiences, they should receive some sort of compensation for their work. If there were no college athletes, the NCAA wouldn’t exist, college coaches wouldn’t receive there (sometimes very high) salaries, and brands like Nike couldn’t profit from college sports. In fact, the NCAA brings in roughly $1 billion in revenue a year, but college athletes don’t receive any of that money in the form of a paycheck. Additionally, people who believe college athletes should be paid state that paying college athletes will actually encourage them to remain in college longer and not turn pro as quickly, either by giving them a way to begin earning money in college or requiring them to sign a contract stating they’ll stay at the university for a certain number of years while making an agreed-upon salary.  

Supporters of this idea point to Zion Williamson, the Duke basketball superstar, who, during his freshman year, sustained a serious knee injury. Many argued that, even if he enjoyed playing for Duke, it wasn’t worth risking another injury and ending his professional career before it even began for a program that wasn’t paying him. Williamson seems to have agreed with them and declared his eligibility for the NCAA draft later that year. If he was being paid, he may have stayed at Duke longer. In fact, roughly a third of student athletes surveyed stated that receiving a salary while in college would make them “strongly consider” remaining collegiate athletes longer before turning pro.

Paying athletes could also stop the recruitment scandals that have plagued the NCAA. In 2018, the NCAA stripped the University of Louisville's men's basketball team of its 2013 national championship title because it was discovered coaches were using sex workers to entice recruits to join the team. There have been dozens of other recruitment scandals where college athletes and recruits have been bribed with anything from having their grades changed, to getting free cars, to being straight out bribed. By paying college athletes and putting their salaries out in the open, the NCAA could end the illegal and underhanded ways some schools and coaches try to entice athletes to join.

People who argue against the idea of paying college athletes believe the practice could be disastrous for college sports. By paying athletes, they argue, they’d turn college sports into a bidding war, where only the richest schools could afford top athletes, and the majority of schools would be shut out from developing a talented team (though some argue this already happens because the best players often go to the most established college sports programs, who typically pay their coaches millions of dollars per year). It could also ruin the tight camaraderie of many college teams if players become jealous that certain teammates are making more money than they are.

They also argue that paying college athletes actually means only a small fraction would make significant money. Out of the 350 Division I athletic departments, fewer than a dozen earn any money. Nearly all the money the NCAA makes comes from men’s football and basketball, so paying college athletes would make a small group of men--who likely will be signed to pro teams and begin making millions immediately out of college--rich at the expense of other players.

Those against paying college athletes also believe that the athletes are receiving enough benefits already. The top athletes already receive scholarships that are worth tens of thousands per year, they receive free food/housing/textbooks, have access to top medical care if they are injured, receive top coaching, get travel perks and free gear, and can use their time in college as a way to capture the attention of professional recruiters. No other college students receive anywhere near as much from their schools.

People on this side also point out that, while the NCAA brings in a massive amount of money each year, it is still a non-profit organization. How? Because over 95% of those profits are redistributed to its members’ institutions in the form of scholarships, grants, conferences, support for Division II and Division III teams, and educational programs. Taking away a significant part of that revenue would hurt smaller programs that rely on that money to keep running.

While both sides have good points, it’s clear that the negatives of paying college athletes far outweigh the positives. College athletes spend a significant amount of time and energy playing for their school, but they are compensated for it by the scholarships and perks they receive. Adding a salary to that would result in a college athletic system where only a small handful of athletes (those likely to become millionaires in the professional leagues) are paid by a handful of schools who enter bidding wars to recruit them, while the majority of student athletics and college athletic programs suffer or even shut down for lack of money. Continuing to offer the current level of benefits to student athletes makes it possible for as many people to benefit from and enjoy college sports as possible.

This argumentative essay follows the Rogerian model. It discusses each side, first laying out multiple reasons people believe student athletes should be paid, then discussing reasons why the athletes shouldn’t be paid. It ends by stating that college athletes shouldn’t be paid by arguing that paying them would destroy college athletics programs and cause them to have many of the issues professional sports leagues have.

• Both sides of the argument are well developed, with multiple reasons why people agree with each side. It allows readers to get a full view of the argument and its nuances.
• Certain statements on both sides are directly rebuffed in order to show where the strengths and weaknesses of each side lie and give a more complete and sophisticated look at the argument.
• Using the Rogerian model can be tricky because oftentimes you don’t explicitly state your argument until the end of the paper. Here, the thesis doesn’t appear until the first sentence of the final paragraph. That doesn’t give readers a lot of time to be convinced that your argument is the right one, compared to a paper where the thesis is stated in the beginning and then supported throughout the paper. This paper could be strengthened if the final paragraph was expanded to more fully explain why the author supports the view, or if the paper had made it clearer that paying athletes was the weaker argument throughout.

3 Tips for Writing a Good Argumentative Essay

Now that you’ve seen examples of what good argumentative essay samples look like, follow these three tips when crafting your own essay.

#1: Make Your Thesis Crystal Clear

The thesis is the key to your argumentative essay; if it isn’t clear or readers can’t find it easily, your entire essay will be weak as a result. Always make sure that your thesis statement is easy to find. The typical spot for it is the final sentence of the introduction paragraph, but if it doesn’t fit in that spot for your essay, try to at least put it as the first or last sentence of a different paragraph so it stands out more.

Also make sure that your thesis makes clear what side of the argument you’re on. After you’ve written it, it’s a great idea to show your thesis to a couple different people--classmates are great for this. Just by reading your thesis they should be able to understand what point you’ll be trying to make with the rest of your essay.

#2: Show Why the Other Side Is Weak

When writing your essay, you may be tempted to ignore the other side of the argument and just focus on your side, but don’t do this. The best argumentative essays really tear apart the other side to show why readers shouldn’t believe it. Before you begin writing your essay, research what the other side believes, and what their strongest points are. Then, in your essay, be sure to mention each of these and use evidence to explain why they’re incorrect/weak arguments. That’ll make your essay much more effective than if you only focused on your side of the argument.

#3: Use Evidence to Support Your Side

Remember, an essay can’t be an argumentative essay if it doesn’t support its argument with evidence. For every point you make, make sure you have facts to back it up. Some examples are previous studies done on the topic, surveys of large groups of people, data points, etc. There should be lots of numbers in your argumentative essay that support your side of the argument. This will make your essay much stronger compared to only relying on your own opinions to support your argument.

Summary: Argumentative Essay Sample

Argumentative essays are persuasive essays that use facts and evidence to support their side of the argument. Most argumentative essays follow either the Toulmin model or the Rogerian model. By reading good argumentative essay examples, you can learn how to develop your essay and provide enough support to make readers agree with your opinion. When writing your essay, remember to always make your thesis clear, show where the other side is weak, and back up your opinion with data and evidence.

What's Next?

Do you need to write an argumentative essay as well? Check out our guide on the best argumentative essay topics for ideas!

You'll probably also need to write research papers for school. We've got you covered with 113 potential topics for research papers.

Your college admissions essay may end up being one of the most important essays you write. Follow our step-by-step guide on writing a personal statement to have an essay that'll impress colleges.

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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• Writing Tips

How to Write an Argumentative Essay

4-minute read

• 30th April 2022

An argumentative essay is a structured, compelling piece of writing where an author clearly defines their stance on a specific topic. This is a very popular style of writing assigned to students at schools, colleges, and universities. Learn the steps to researching, structuring, and writing an effective argumentative essay below.

Requirements of an Argumentative Essay

To effectively achieve its purpose, an argumentative essay must contain:

●  A concise thesis statement that introduces readers to the central argument of the essay

●  A clear, logical, argument that engages readers

●  Ample research and evidence that supports your argument

Approaches to Use in Your Argumentative Essay

1.   classical.

●  Clearly present the central argument.

●  Outline your opinion.

●  Provide enough evidence to support your theory.

2.   Toulmin

●  State your claim.

●  Supply the evidence for your stance.

●  Explain how these findings support the argument.

●  Include and discuss any limitations of your belief.

3.   Rogerian

●  Explain the opposing stance of your argument.

●  Discuss the problems with adopting this viewpoint.

●  Offer your position on the matter.

●  Provide reasons for why yours is the more beneficial stance.

●  Include a potential compromise for the topic at hand.

Tips for Writing a Well-Written Argumentative Essay

●  Introduce your topic in a bold, direct, and engaging manner to captivate your readers and encourage them to keep reading.

●  Provide sufficient evidence to justify your argument and convince readers to adopt this point of view.

●  Consider, include, and fairly present all sides of the topic.

●  Structure your argument in a clear, logical manner that helps your readers to understand your thought process.

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●  Discuss any counterarguments that might be posed.

●  Use persuasive writing that’s appropriate for your target audience and motivates them to agree with you.

Steps to Write an Argumentative Essay

Follow these basic steps to write a powerful and meaningful argumentative essay :

Step 1: Choose a topic that you’re passionate about

If you’ve already been given a topic to write about, pick a stance that resonates deeply with you. This will shine through in your writing, make the research process easier, and positively influence the outcome of your argument.

Step 2: Conduct ample research to prove the validity of your argument

To write an emotive argumentative essay , finding enough research to support your theory is a must. You’ll need solid evidence to convince readers to agree with your take on the matter. You’ll also need to logically organize the research so that it naturally convinces readers of your viewpoint and leaves no room for questioning.

Step 3: Follow a simple, easy-to-follow structure and compile your essay

A good structure to ensure a well-written and effective argumentative essay includes:

Introduction

●  Introduce your topic.

●  Offer background information on the claim.

●  Discuss the evidence you’ll present to support your argument.

●  State your thesis statement, a one-to-two sentence summary of your claim.

●  This is the section where you’ll develop and expand on your argument.

●  It should be split into three or four coherent paragraphs, with each one presenting its own idea.

●  Start each paragraph with a topic sentence that indicates why readers should adopt your belief or stance.

●  Include your research, statistics, citations, and other supporting evidence.

●  Discuss opposing viewpoints and why they’re invalid.

●  This part typically consists of one paragraph.

●  Summarize your research and the findings that were presented.

●  Emphasize your initial thesis statement.

●  Persuade readers to agree with your stance.

We certainly hope that you feel inspired to use these tips when writing your next argumentative essay . And, if you’re currently elbow-deep in writing one, consider submitting a free sample to us once it’s completed. Our expert team of editors can help ensure that it’s concise, error-free, and effective!

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Essay on Lying Is Always Wrong

Students are often asked to write an essay on Lying Is Always Wrong in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Lying Is Always Wrong

What is lying.

Lying means not telling the truth. When people lie, they say something that they know is not true. Lying can hurt people’s feelings and make it hard to trust the person who lied.

Trust is Important

Trust is like a glue in friendships and families. When someone lies, it can break this trust. If people do not trust each other, they can’t work together well or be good friends.

Lying Can Hurt

Lies can cause pain. For example, if you lie to a friend, they might feel sad or betrayed. Lying can also lead to more lies, making things very complicated.

Always Wrong?

Some think lying is always wrong because it breaks trust and can harm others. Telling the truth is a good habit that helps everyone get along better and feel happier.

250 Words Essay on Lying Is Always Wrong

Lying means not telling the truth. When people lie, they say something that they know is not true. Sometimes they do this to avoid trouble or to make themselves look better. Other times, they might lie to keep someone else from getting upset.

Why Lying is Bad

Lying is always wrong because it breaks trust. Trust is like a special promise between people that they will be honest with each other. When someone lies, it hurts this promise. If people find out that someone has lied to them, they might feel sad, angry, or find it hard to believe that person again. This can ruin friendships and make it difficult for people to work together or be close to each other.

Lying Can Hurt People

Lies can also cause harm to others. For example, if a person lies about something being safe when it is not, someone could get hurt. Even small lies can lead to big problems. When someone starts lying, they often have to tell more lies to cover up the first one. This can create a web of lies that is hard to escape from.

Always Choose Honesty

It is important to always choose honesty over lying. Being honest might be hard sometimes, but it is the right thing to do. When people are honest, they build strong relationships with others based on trust and respect. Honesty also helps people feel good about themselves because they know they are doing the right thing.

In conclusion, lying is wrong because it breaks trust, can hurt people, and leads to more lies. Always being honest is the best path to take.

500 Words Essay on Lying Is Always Wrong

Lying means not telling the truth. When people lie, they say something that they know is not true. Sometimes they do this to hide something, to make themselves look better, or to avoid getting into trouble. Lying can be about big things or small things.

One reason lying is always wrong is that it breaks trust. Trust is like a glue that holds friendships and families together. When you tell the truth, people can believe you. They know you are a person who keeps their word. But if you lie, people might not trust you anymore. Once trust is broken, it is very hard to fix.

Lies Can Hurt People

Lies can also hurt people. If you lie to someone, you might make them feel sad or angry when they find out the truth. Imagine if someone lied to you about something important. You would feel upset, right? That’s how others feel when we lie to them. Even if the lie seems small, it can still cause pain.

Lies Can Get Out of Control

Another problem with lying is that one lie often leads to another. To cover up the first lie, you might have to tell more lies. Soon, you can be caught in a web of lies. It’s like when you tell your teacher that your dog ate your homework when it didn’t. The next day, you might have to lie about why your dog is not sick from eating paper. It gets harder and harder to keep the story straight.

Lying Can Lead to Bad Habits

Lying can become a bad habit. If you lie once and don’t get caught, you might think it’s okay to lie again. But this is dangerous because lying can become something you do without even thinking about it. And the more you lie, the more likely it is that you will be caught eventually.

Always Telling the Truth

Always telling the truth is the best way to live. You don’t have to remember what you said because it’s the truth. You don’t have to worry about being caught in a lie. And people will trust you and feel good about being your friend. Telling the truth might be hard sometimes, but it is the right thing to do.

In conclusion, lying is always wrong because it breaks trust, hurts people, can get out of control, and can turn into a bad habit. Telling the truth is a sign of respect to others and to yourself. It builds strong relationships and makes life simpler and happier. Remember, every time you are honest, you are doing something good for the world and for yourself.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Lunar Eclipse
• Essay on Love Your Work
• Essay on Love Of God

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Guest Essay

‘They Have Established the Backbone of the Case’: Three Lawyers Dissect the Trump Trial

By David French ,  Rebecca Roiphe and Ken White

Mr. French is a Times columnist. Ms. Roiphe is a former assistant district attorney in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Mr. White is a former federal prosecutor.

David French, a Times columnist, hosted a written online conversation with Rebecca Roiphe, a former assistant district attorney in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and Ken White, a former federal prosecutor, to discuss Donald Trump’s Manhattan trial and Michael Cohen’s testimony.

David French: Let’s start with a big-picture question. I have less trial experience than either of you, but this deep into a trial, I always had a sense of the momentum of the case, of who is winning and who is losing. Who is more pleased with the course of the trial so far — the prosecution or the defense?

Rebecca Roiphe: In my view, the prosecution is happier about how things are going than the defense. They have established the backbone of the case, which is the false records, and they have provided a great deal of circumstantial evidence tying Donald Trump to those records and establishing his intent.

Ken White: When you ask who is more pleased with the course of the trial, remember that Trump is usually pursuing a public relations and political strategy at the expense of good courtroom strategy. In that sense, I suspect Team Trump is happy that he’s getting lots of airtime to push his narrative that he’s a victim of the elites and that the trial doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact on his polling numbers.

If you ask me as a trial lawyer, I agree with Rebecca that the D.A. is doing a solid job proving the elements of its case and telling the story in a way likely to grab the jury. So far, they are hitting all the necessary points.

French: Stormy Daniels’s testimony was far more riveting and disturbing than I anticipated. She described a sexual encounter that was fundamentally exploitive and potentially even predatory. In the aftermath, Trump’s lawyer moved for a mistrial, claiming that the details of that testimony could prejudice the jury. What was your assessment of her testimony? Did the prosecution make a mistake in asking her to describe the details of the encounter?

White: This is all on Trump. He’s the one who decided, for ego reasons, to make repeated claims that the sexual encounter never happened. He could have rendered the details irrelevant by keeping his mouth shut, but he had to call her a liar. That makes it relevant. Yes, her description was skin-crawling. She wasn’t a great witness — she was argumentative and had trouble answering questions directly — but she did what the prosecution needed her to do.

Roiphe: The prosecution was in a difficult position. It needed to establish that this story would have been disturbing, so much so that Trump would find it necessary to suppress it. But the judge had admonished them not to bring out too many details. The media got caught up in the sex scene at the expense of the real point of the testimony, and it’s possible that the jury did as well. But I don’t think it will ultimately undermine the case.

French: Is the judge’s decision to deny the motion for mistrial a reversible error?

Roiphe: I don’t think this will cause a huge legal problem for the prosecution on appeal. Defense lawyers call for mistrials all the time, and judges have a great deal of latitude in dealing with moments like these when testimony slips out that should not have.

French: Let’s talk about Michael Cohen for a moment. His testimony is obviously crucial for the prosecution, but as is often the case, the prosecution is using the testimony of a criminal to try to convict the defendant. How vulnerable are criminal informants to impeachment, and how do juries tend to process their testimony?

White: It’s a rookie mistake for a prosecutor to try to argue, “Actually, our cooperator isn’t that bad.” Cohen is that bad. Redemption tour and podcast or not, he’s a convicted liar. Fortunately the D.A. isn’t making him out to be an angel.

Roiphe: The prosecution has done a great job in setting up Cohen’s testimony. They have used other witnesses to paint him as a misfit, a liar, a bully. You don’t have to like Cohen to believe him. There are so many dots that have already been connected that Cohen is simply going over ground that has already been paved.

White: And prosecutors seem to be using the classic move of using Cohen’s dishonesty against Trump, by showing to the jury that Trump chose Cohen precisely because he’s a crook. Watch for them to lean into that theme in closing: Cohen is a dishonest person who does dishonest things, and that’s why Trump needed him.

Roiphe: There are a few key pieces of his testimony beyond what has already been established that the prosecution hopes the jury will believe. Namely, that Trump led this scheme and was directly involved in the cover-up.

French: I want to share my chief concern about the case. Readers may recall that to secure a conviction for a felony, the prosecution doesn’t just have to prove that Trump falsified business records but that he did so in furtherance of another crime. In your judgment, is the prosecution doing enough to establish that crucial element of the case? And is that element of the case legally robust enough to survive an appeal?

Roiphe: I am not as concerned about the vulnerability of this case as others have been. There has been a lot of testimony about Trump’s concern about these women’s stories and how they would affect the election. This testimony has come from pretty uncontroversial witnesses like Hope Hicks. In a way, it’s just common sense: Why were all these people involved in such a coordinated and intricate effort to make these payments and then lie about them? There are very few plausible reasons other than the one the prosecution has set forth.

White: The jury will be less worried about the nuances of the “furtherance of another crime” element than we commenters are. Juries tend to absorb things on a big-picture story level. The D.A. has done a very solid job connecting Trump’s deceit and hush-money payments to campaign concerns, not to family embarrassment.

French: It would be a dreadful outcome for the country if Trump is convicted before the election, only to have that conviction reversed afterward. It would provide rocket fuel for the argument that the prosecution was little more than partisan election interference.

Roiphe: For the D.A.’s office, in terms of the legal question, this just doesn’t look all that different from other cases that it regularly prosecutes. Sure, the means are different. But I think the New York courts will see this as consistent with the very broad interpretation they have given to this statute.

French: Has the defense scored any obvious points? My perception, much like yours, is that the prosecution has done a solid job of building its case. But are there any surprising weak points? What’s the defense’s best moment so far?

Roiphe: I thought the defense scored some points with Stormy Daniels, even though overall her testimony was solid. Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles argued that Daniels had a vendetta, that she hates Trump and that she has been inconsistent in telling this story. But the jury doesn’t really have to think her motives are innocent, as long as they believe the basic story. And I don’t think the defense managed to blow up her testimony in any important way.

White: The defense’s attempts to shame Stormy Daniels for being an adult film performer fell flat, as they should. I think the defense’s best opportunity to really shine will come during the cross-examination of Michael Cohen.

French: Justice Juan Merchan has one of the most challenging jobs in trial judge history. He’s presiding over the prosecution of a former president, and Trump is an extraordinarily defiant defendant. How’s he doing?

Roiphe: One of the hardest things for the judge is whether and to what extent to take into account the identity of the defendant in making decisions. For the most part, the judge has treated this like any other trial and in that way has done a solid job and appeared impartial.

White: Justice Merchan has a thankless job. The defense is treating him extremely disrespectfully, and the prosecution is being impatient. When he is cautious and methodical, as he has been in taking the gag order and contempt issues slowly and carefully, half the country is frustrated that he hasn’t thrown Trump in jail, and half is furious that he’s persecuting Trump.

Roiphe: The gag order has really been a test. It would be such a spectacle to throw a former president in jail for contempt. It would have played right into Trump’s victim narrative.

White: Overall, he seems to be doing a thoughtful, patient job.

French: My understanding is that the defense wasn’t necessarily planning on calling a large number of witnesses, and I certainly don’t expect Trump to testify. When their turn comes to make their case, what do you expect? How much will the defense tell its own story, as opposed to resting mainly on cross-examination of prosecution witnesses?

Roiphe: Some of that might depend on how well Cohen holds up on cross-examination. If the prosecution looks as strong as it does now at the time the government rests its case, I think the defense will feel a lot of pressure to put on some sort of case.

It’s hard to know what sort of defense they would put on, given that they never really settled on one theory. They went in with the sweeping argument that Trump did nothing at all wrong. They would have a hard time establishing that his conduct was perfect. But they may be able to buttress some of the smaller arguments they have raised if they can call witnesses who could undermine the prosecution’s argument about his intent.

White: The Trump team will make the decision based largely on political strategy, not courtroom strategy. They may offer some witnesses who will advance the campaign narrative of Trump the victim.

French: In normal circumstances, applying a political strategy to a criminal prosecution would be foolish. You could make yourself popular but still go to jail.

Roiphe: The defense essentially shifted the burden to themselves to prove their client is perfect, when all they had to do was show that the prosecution failed to prove its case. But from a political perspective, that’s so Trump, and it has worked for him.

French: In this circumstance, how much could a political victory help Trump legally? This would be a state conviction, not federal, so his control over the Department of Justice doesn’t matter, and he would not have the power to pardon himself. But would a political victory make a conviction fundamentally irrelevant?

Roiphe: Practically, the appeals process will inevitably take time, and I doubt if Trump wins the election, he would be sent to state prison. So maybe in the long run, it’s not a terrible miscalculation.

White: Since the Mueller investigation, Trump has consistently done things that are foolish legally but promote his narrative — his brand. We saw that recently in the E. Jean Carroll trials, we saw it throughout the investigations leading up to the four criminal cases against him, and we’re seeing it in court now. The smart play here, for instance, would have been to say it doesn’t matter whether or not he had a relationship with Stormy Daniels, because that renders big chunks of the case irrelevant. But character is destiny, and Trump’s character is egotistical and combative.

French: Let’s end with some lightning round questions. First, since the trial has started, in your view has the chance of conviction gone up or down?

Roiphe: Up.

White: Up significantly.

French: Trump is supremely irritated by the judge’s gag order, and while gag orders are infrequent, they’re not all that unusual. Is the gag order in this case justified?

Roiphe: Yes, although I think there should be an exception when witnesses like Michael Cohen have been so public and vocal.

White: We should thank Trump for making law on gag orders. We have a very detailed D.C. Circuit opinion now that will be extremely helpful in a First Amendment area that was previously not well charted. By being so willing to antagonize the judge and by being able to afford lawyers to brief and appeal the gag order, Trump’s helping clarify the law.

French: One last question: J.D. Vance has been mentioned as a potential Trump vice-presidential pick, and he showed up at court on Monday to support Trump. Who is the next V.P. hopeful to make an appearance?

Roiphe: The ghost of Kristi Noem’s dog?

White: It’s going to be Alex Jones or any cop who has pepper-sprayed at least five student protesters.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Rebecca Roiphe, a former assistant district attorney in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, is a law professor at New York Law School. Ken White, a former federal prosecutor, is a partner at Brown White & Osborn in Los Angeles.

Source photographs by Charly Triballeau, MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle, Michael M. Santiago, and The Washington Post via Getty Images.

David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation .” You can follow him on Threads ( @davidfrenchjag ).

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Northwestern University hosts inaugural Chicago Mental Health Film Showcase

Award-winning films and a Midwest premiere included in the free two-day festival

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• Release Date: May 14, 2024

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Stephen J. Lewis

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Evanston, IL --- In recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, Northwestern University's Pritzker Pucker Studio Lab for the Promotion of Mental Health via Cinematic Arts launches the Chicago Mental Health Film Showcase, two days of films and conversations. Screenings will take place on Northwestern's Evanston campus at the Block Cinema, 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston, and in Annie May Swift Hall, 1920 Campus Drive, Evanston on May 23 and May 24.

The three featured films include the award-winning hybrid documentary “Island of the Hungry Ghosts,” which addresses migration and the limits of therapy; a hard-hitting feminist analysis of Hollywood's cinematic language in “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power” ; and the Midwest premiere of the award-winning new French fiction film “The Rapture (Le Ravissement)” .

Ranging from migration and gendered cinematic shot design to motherhood, the topics of the selected films vary greatly, yet are tied together by positioning questions of mental health in the context of greater societal and cultural conditions and pressures.

Film screenings and discussions are free and open to the public. Links to screeners are available upon request: [email protected]

Program and schedule are as follows:

“Island of the Hungry Ghosts” (2018) Germany, UK, Australia, 98 minutes Director and writer: Gabrielle Brady

Thursday, May 23 Block Cinema, 7 p.m. Followed by a post-screening discussion

On Christmas Island, an idyllic yet isolated island in the Indian Ocean, millions of land crabs migrate annually from the jungle to the sea. The same jungle hides a high-security Australian detention center where thousands of asylum seekers have been locked away indefinitely. Their only connection to the outside world is trauma counsellor Poh Lin Lee, who lives on the island with her family. As Poh attempts to provide support through individual therapy sessions, conditions for the detainees remain unbearable. In this award-winning hybrid documentary, Australian director Gabrielle Brady masterfully interweaves the detainees' stories with the beauty of the island's natural world, intimate family moments, and the local community's "hungry ghost" rituals for the spirits of those who died on the island without a burial. Beautifully rendered and contemplative in tone, “Island of the Hungry Ghosts” explores belonging, isolation and migration, while considering the limits of therapy during a time of crisis.

“Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power” (2022), USA, 107 minutes Director: Nina Menkes

Friday, May 24 Annie May Swift Hall Auditorium, 3:30 p.m. Co-presented by Northwestern University's Women Filmmaker's Alliance (NUWFA)

In this hard-hitting docu-essay, celebrated independent fiction filmmaker Nina Menkes explores the sexual politics of cinematic shot design. Using clips from hundreds of movies — from “Metropolis” to “Vertigo to Phantom Thread” — Menkes convincingly makes the argument that patriarchal narrative codes hide within “classic” set-ups and camera angles and demonstrates how women are frequently displayed as objects. Building on Laura Mulvey's essential writings on the male gaze, Menkes shows how these embedded messages intersect with the twin epidemics of sexual abuse and assault, as well as employment discrimination against women, especially in the film industry. The film features interviews with Laura Mulvey, Julie Dash, Penelope Spheeris, Charlyne Yi, Joey Soloway, Catherine Hardwicke, Iyabo Kwayana, Eliza Hittman and Rosanna Arquette, among others. After extensive festival play at Sundance, Berlin, IDFA and more, “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power” was included in numerous “Ten Best of the Year” lists, including The Guardian, Sight & Sound, Alliance of Women Film Journalists, Roger Ebert and NPR…

“The Rapture (Le Ravissement)” (2023), France, 97 minutes Director: Iris Kaltenbäck

Friday, May 24 Block Cinema, 7 p.m. Followed by a post-screening discussion

Lydia (Hafsia Herzi), a caring young midwife, drifts through Paris after the relationship with her boyfriend falls apart. When her best friend Salomé (Nina Meurisse) becomes pregnant, Lydia spirals out of control, relentlessly throwing herself into her work at the maternity ward, while secretly obsessing over a one-night stand with Milos (Alexis Manenti). After taking worrisome risks with the delivery of Salomé's baby, Lydia helps out by babysitting while simultaneously spinning a self-destructive web of lies that has dire consequences. Anchored by a beautifully subtle yet powerful performance by Herzi, “The Rapture” combines the tense, suspenseful elements of a procedural with an intimate view of Lydia's solitary existence and her ultimate unraveling. Far from didactic, the film reveals complex feelings and expectations about motherhood, romantic relationships and friendship that bear down on Lydia. The first feature film by French director Iris   Kaltenbäck, “The Rapture (Le Ravissement)” premiered at the 2023 Cannes Critics' Week where it won the Prix SACD.  

About the Pritzker Pucker Studio Lab: Northwestern University’s Pritzker Pucker Studio Lab for the Promotion of Mental Health via Cinematic Arts creatively examines representations of mental illness and health on screen and supports students in the production of original media art works that challenge stereotypes. Student filmmakers, faculty, visiting artists and the wider public engage with the studio lab in a variety of ways — from the production of new works and courses to public events such as the Chicago Mental Health Film Showcase. The studio lab strives to tackle complex topics, destigmatize mental illness, and promote healing through creative innovation and inquiry.

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