Kant's Morality Of Lying

For Kant, lying is always wrong. It does not matter the situation someone is, as long as someone does the right thing for the sake of duty. However, there are paternalistic lies, which are lies that human being uses for protecting other people’s lives. Kant thinks if we do so, we are taking away their human rights. He says that lying affects our “intrinsic worth”, would threat people as a mean and not as an end, and would hurt people’s feeling. First, each person is born with “intrinsic worth”. A person is capable to make his or her own choices. In any case, if someone pretends to save one’s life, he or she says a paternalistic lie because they are protecting him or her. However, if we do the right things for the sake of duty, we are going …show more content…
So, in order to be moral, we have to respect the other person’ life. Our actions and decisions can be considered whether they are moral or not. By reasoning, we can identity the limits of understanding any particular situation and respect opinions or decisions. Utilitarian says that lying is right as long as it benefits the most number of people; Kantians, lying is always wrong. For example: a very young girl gets pregnant, and she is deciding either abort or not. She thinks that she has to take care of the baby, stop studying for a while, moved out to another house because of her parents would kick her out. She finally decides that she is going to abort no matter what. She did it and tells her mom that she will be on vacation for a week. She never told her boyfriend that she was pregnant. For Kant, she is not being moral because she is not protecting the baby’s feeling and her parents’ feelings. The baby is not born yet, and has the right because the baby is a life. Even if her parents get mad, she could have handled that for herself along with her boyfriend. Furthermore, she is not counting her boyfriend’s feelings as well. She is choosing for herself. Yet, she is not thinking rationally and lies to everyone just to “protect the baby, parents, and boyfriend’s feeling” and they do not get worried, but she is not doing