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Lying to Liars
Sissela Bok, Lying Chapter 9
Contemporary Moral Problems
Professor Douglas Olena
Chapter Preface
People should meet smiles with smiles and lies with treachery.  -The Poetic Edda
Therefore I lie with her and she with me, and in our faults by lies we flattered be.  -Shakespeare
Chapter Outline
Lying to Unmask Liars
An Eye for an Eye
Mutual Deceits
Unmasking Liars
123, 124 The story of the Priscillian heretics
	Bishop Priscillian died for his beliefs and his followers went into hiding pretending to be ordinary churchmen, lying about their adherence to prevailing dogma to escape persecution while practicing their heresies in private.
	Consentius wished to ferret out the the heretics by infiltrating their ranks through deceit.
	Augustine, in answer to Consentius¼ question about whether he should lie to gain the advantage, said, „that, though he was delighted with the zeal exhibited in åraging against even latent heretics,¼ he did not think it right to draw them out of hiding by lies.¾
Unmasking Liars
125 „To repay in kind, to emulate the wrongdoing, immaturity, or incompetence of those one has to contend with, is certainly at times to accept lower standards.¾
„It has seemed to many that there is indeed some justification for repaying lies with liesä to a great manyä who know what they are doing.¾
Eye for an Eye
125 Excuses having to do with the justice of repayment, an eye for an eye, etc. are appealing to fairness. 
Give the liar what he deserves, restore equilibrium.
126 „If at times violence can be used to counter violence, why should lies never be used to counter lies?¾
Eye for an Eye
126 „Two separate moral questions are confused in such debates.¾
	„The first asks whether a liar has the same claim to be told the truth as an honest person.¾
	„The second asks whether one is more justified in lying to a liar than to others.¾
Eye for an Eye
126 To answer the first question, the liar certainly can have no cause for complaint when lied to.
„It has seemed to many, as a result, that liars are fair game for deception.¾
The answer to the second question is of a different nature and is inhibited by the answer to the first.
The answer to the second question has nothing to do with the liar but with the one proposing to carry out the revenge. 
Is it right to lie? Are there not consequences to any lie? This possible lie to the liar should be as carefully examined as any other lie.
Eye for an Eye
127 „The risks to others, to general trust, and to those who lie to liars in retaliation merely accumulate and spread thereby.¾
„Only if there are separate, and more compelling, excuses can lying to liars be justified.¾
Eye for an Eye
127 „What might these more compelling excuses be?¾
	„One would be the complete harmlessness of the intended lie.¾
	The liar may have precipitated a crisis of dramatic proportions that need to be addressed. This however, does not mean that the lie should be addressed to the liar.
	There may be a desire to teach the liar a lesson, though there may be a better way to do that in an honest fashion. The desire to teach a lesson by lying will probably do more harm than good
Eye for an Eye
128 There is a fourth claim in Consentius¼ request to lie to unmask the heretics: His lies were meant to serve the principle of veracity.
129 Augustine denied the usefulness of lying to liars in forceful terms.
The appeal to veracity in order to excuse lying to liars does not stand up well under scrutiny.
Mutual Deceits
129 „Most friendships and families rely on some such reciprocity to sustain illusions, suppress some memory too painful to confront, and give support where it is needed.¾
130 „Sometimes these bonds are willingly maintained; most often they are painfully upheld, with little or no freedom to begin afresh.¾
These arrangements can work with mutual assent but that mutual assent is not so often symmetrical. Often there is some implicit force behind the maintenance of such lies.
Mutual Deceits
131 „Much greater problems in bargaining arise when one or both parties do not participate voluntarily, or where both parties are not equally aware of the ground rules allowing deception.¾
132 „A recent study shows that businessmen are increasingly concerned that their work brings pressure upon these standards by rewarding deception.¾
Summary
132, 133 „The fact that someone is himself a liar does not by itself add strength to excuses for deception, such as
	the harmlessness of the lie
	the existence of a crises
	voluntary mutual consent in clearly delineated circumstances.¾
133 „Alternatives have to be weighed, moral arguments considered, the test of publicity taken into account.¾