The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

354 chapter 32Kant’s most famous example to the contrary—claiming as he does thatthere are no real dilemmas, that the rule of Reason can resolve them all onthe basis of universal and self-evident axioms—has been amazing peopleever since he first gave it, in an essay of 1797, “On a Supposed Right to LieBecause of Love of Humanity.” It was written, note, eleven years afterMr. Green’s death and therefore by a Kant without the check of bourgeoisprudence.The logic of his categorical imperative, said Kant, requires that, if askedby a man who has told you he is on a mission of murder, you should revealthe location of his intended victim. The maxim, a “perfect duty”: alwaystell the truth. You do not know for sure what the consequences will be if you tellthe horrible truth, but you do know for sure that you will have lied if youfail to tell it.Kant was anticipated by forty years in this line of argument by the ReverendDavid Fordyce of Aberdeen:Sincerity . . . is another virtue or duty of great importance to society. ...It doesnot indeed require that we expose our sentiments indiscreetly, or tell all truth inevery case; but certainly it does not admit the least violation of truth....No pretenseof private or public good can possibly counter-balance the ill consequencesof such a violation. ...It belongs to us to do what appears right and conformableto the laws of our nature, and to leave heaven to direct and over-rule eventsor consequences, which it will never fail to do for the best. 7Aside from the last Panglossian and theistic appeal, which Kant denied himself,and which Candide had anyway in 1759 made a catchphrase for idiocyin Europe, Kant could have written this. Fordyce’s short book containing thepassage, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, had been translated into Frenchand German by 1757, and was described c. 1760 as “celebrated” in Germany. 8Much of the book was reprinted well into the nineteenth century as theentry “Ethics” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the first through third editionsof which Kant might also have seen. So perhaps the similarity is morethan coincidental.Kant and Fordyce believed you would not want the maxim “Lie when youimagine it might have good consequences” to be universal. One can understandthe point: “Without [sincerity] ...society would be a dominion of mistrust,”as Fordyce put it. It is called by modern linguists “the axiom of quality.”But to a murderer? Not the least violation of truth? Isn’t the ethical act that isto be evaluated not the act of “lying” in general, which to be sure we would not