honesty

a.k.a. truthfulness, veracity

There are some good arguments that the “little white lies” or lies told out of kindness (“does this make me look fat?”) are more harmful than people tend to think and that even those of us who think of ourselves as absolutely honest about important things ought to rededicate ourselves to being more straightforward even in the little things. See for example Sissela Bok’s Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life.

There are lots of ways to deceive without saying anything that’s not technically true; beware of getting into that habit.

On-line honesty has its own challenges. It’s hard to be candid when you know “cancel culture” may hold wrongthink against you in the future and the internet never forgets. People are incentivized to put forth online personae that include distortions, embellishments, or fabrications.

(Note: I sometimes see the word “honesty” in older books, such as translations of classic Latin texts, used to mean virtue in general, or integrity, or honor, or something of that sort, rather than to mean specifically a virtue with regard to truth-telling.)

Complementary virtues¶

• candor
• earnestness
• honor
• integrity
• probity
• reputability
• sincerity
• straightforwardness
• trustworthiness

Dedication to honesty also means cultivating the various intellectual virtues that help you to know the difference between what is true and what is false.

Contrasting vices¶

• dishonesty

Virtues possibly in tension¶

• tact

How to acquire or strengthen it¶

TBD

Notes and links¶

• Notes on Honesty (David, LessWrong)
• See also the "radical honesty" folks.
• Skills You Need: Truthfulness
• One way we show honesty is in the promises we make. In these we need to be both sincere when we make the promise (understanding what we’re committing to and genuinely committing to it) and willing to persevere if the promise ends up being harder to fulfill than we’d expected. See Cicero, De Officiis I.7.
• Is there perhaps a reciprocal virtue in listening for honesty? “It takes two to speak the truth—one to speak, and another to hear…. We ask our neighbor to suffer himself to be dealt with truly, sincerely, nobly; but he answers no by his deafness.” — Thoreau
• OOO: honesty
• Excerpt of my favorite bit but the whole discussion of when it is permissible to lie in Ductor Dubitantium (Jeremy Taylor, 1613-1667) is terrific.
• The virtue of honesty requires more than just telling the truth, Christian B. Miller Psyche
• Lies and honest mistakes Our crisis of public knowledge is an ethical crisis. Rewarding ‘truthfulness’ above ‘truth’ is a step towards a solution.

Mentioned elsewhere¶

• One of “The Seven Virtues of Bushido” according to Nitobe Inazo.
• One of Shannon Vallor’s "technomoral virtues" (linked with: trust, reliability, integrity).
• One of The VIA Institute’s "Character Strengths" (see their page)
• Kant used honesty as an example of his moral system.
• Veracity is one of William De Witt Hyde’s virtues

Inspirational quotes¶

• William Paley: “a lie may be pernicious in its general tendency, and therefore criminal, though it produce no particular or visible mischief to any one”
• “Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult…. Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings — much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.” —George Eliot (Adam Bede)
• “No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity…. it is only needful that each individual should say what he really feels or thinks, or at least that he should not say what he does not think. And if only a small body of the people were to do so at once, of their own accord, outworn public opinion would fall off us of itself, and a new, living, real opinion would assert itself. And when public opinion should thus have changed without the slightest effort, the internal condition of men’s lives which so torments them would change likewise of its own accord. One is ashamed to say how little is needed for all men to be delivered from those calamities which now oppress them; it is only needful not to lie.” ―Tolstoy
• “To tell the truth is the same as to be a good tailor, or to be a good farmer, or to write beautifully. To be good at any activity requires practice: no matter how hard you try, you cannot do naturally what you have not done repeatedly. In order to get accustomed to speaking the truth, you should tell only the truth, even in the smallest of things.” —Tolstoy
• “If anyone tells me it is an easy thing to speak the truth, I should tell him that he had never tried it.” —George MacDonald
• “It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.” — Samuel Johnson