Habit of Lying

Lying appears to be ubiquitous and universal, yet it has been given comparatively little attention from most philosophers and social scientists. In The Habit of Lying John Vignaux Smyth examines three forms of falsification-lying, concealment, and fiction-and makes a strong critique of traditional philosophical approaches to it. Smyth arrives at some surprising conclusions about the connections between lying and mimesis and between lying, sacrifice, and the sacred. Arguing that the relation between lying and truthtelling has been characterized in the West by strongly sacrificial features, particularly in its relationship to scapegoating, Smyth examines the place of lying in moral philosophy and the role of fiction in analytic philosophy. In the process, he draws from the writing of Bertrand Russell, Sissela Bok, Richard Rorty, Nelson Goodman, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Pavel, F.L.G. Frege, Leo Strauss, Gilbert Ryle, and others. He mounts a strong critique against the Kantian perspective that condemns all lying for whatever reason. With recourse to Paul de Man and Rene Girard, he argues that a critical dimension for understanding lying resides in the problem of unanimity and its relationship to rationality. Moving on to examine the connections between lying and fiction-looking particularly at the novels of Defoe, Stendahl, and Beckett-Smyth demonstrates that when fiction in the logical sense is rescued from falsehood, the problem of falsehood reappears in the form of arbitrariness. Indeed, he shows how the truth-systems of both fiction and non-fiction are threatened, and finds a conceptual relationship between law and arbitrariness. In the final section of the book, Smyth examines questions of fashion and dress (both in a contemporary sense and in the works of Shakespeare). This carefully argued work will engage both analytical and continental philosophers, as well as literary theorists and all others interested in the curious inconsistencies and aporias that mark our sense of morality and right conduct.