Gods Do Not Lie

Abstract

The article is devoted to the justification of the impossibility of lying within the moral space and of its defense in moral philosophy. The author addresses Socrates and Kant as agreeing in two essential points: in seeing morality and lying as connected with the relation of a person towards oneself and in barring themselves from choosing lying as their own act. The author understands the main ethical question of Ancient Times as the question of being themselves the answer to which is given in the concept of action based on carrying back the origin of action to himself. Thus the question of the permissibility of lying becomes the question if it is possible to prefer Non-Being to Being. Article touches it through three subject-matters: on an action as an answer, on god’s not-lying, on speech as an act. Socrates describes different cases of telling lies with good aims and does not give any answer about its moral sanction. But he gives an absolute answer by stating that he never lies himself and by considering his act to be the most valid proof. The philosopher’s act appears to be the most decisive and absolutely undeniable answer to the inherent incompleteness of thinking which is not able to pass into an act. Tracing the initiative of act back to himself human being chooses not the human but the divine in himself. Therefore while he tells lies within the logic of substantive activity and politics, in the moral space does he acts as a divine one who does not lie being self-sufficient. Being an act speech is a moral phenomenon and a subject of moral philosophy. As an act it is self-sufficient and cannot be seen through gnoseology. Prohibition of lying (or impossibility of it within moral space) is the basic condition of both speech and human being as ζῴον λόγον ἔχον. For man there is no choice between truthfulness and lying but only between speech and silence, Kant’s reticence.