Ever since its publication in 1797 On the Supposed Right to Lie from Benevolent Motives (SRL) has sparked outrage and confusion not only amongst those who oppose Kant’s approach to ethics. The crucial question for all those broadly interested in Kantian ethics—either to defend or to defeat it—is whether Kant’s moral system is, as laid out in the Groundwork, thus rigid that it demands of moral agents rather to betray a friend than to lie a (potential) murderer. The problem, however, of that debate is the ignorance of Kant’s distinction between lying in the ethical and in the juridical sense. SRL, I aim to show, portrays a case of lying in the juridical sense. Applying the various formulations of the Categorical Imperative (possible if SRL were a case of lying in the ethical sense) yields confusing results at best. In this paper I thus argue that much of the confusion stems precisely from interpreters neglect to account for Kant’s clear distinction of at least two forms of lying.
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