Whats Wrong With Lying?
If you asked a large number of people what they thought about lying, they would probably give two competing responses: First, they might say that lying is wrong and that people should tell the truth. When they find out that someone has lied to them, they would say, they feel angry and betrayed. If asked whether they themselves have ever lied, though, most people (if responding honestly to the question) would acknowledge that they have. The difficulty in saying categorically whether lying is bad rests on the fact that the answer can really depend very much on the circumstances. Though most people do not want to be lied to, virtually everyone has lied at some point in her life, and will lie again many more times in the future. Kant’s View: All Lying Is Wrong because It Treats People as Means, Not Ends Immanuel Kant took the view that lying is categorically wrong. What makes it wrong, he said, is that it treats other people – the ones to whom the lies are told – as a means to an end rathe
