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Privacy, Respect and the Virtues of Reticence in Kant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2011

Sharon Anderson-Gold
Sharon Anderson-Gold
Affiliation:
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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Extract

At a time when the public is increasingly exposed to public scandals, moral defences of privacy are hard to come by. Privacy, it is argued, is merely a cloak for deception and vice. Since the virtuous have nothing to hide, full disclosure of ourselves to others must be a moral obligation. Given the rigour with which Kant defends the prohibition on lying, many have inferred that Kantian ethics must be equally strict on the necessity of truth telling. Do we in fact owe others the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , July 2010 , pp. 28 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Kantian Review 2010

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References

Anderson-Gold, S. (2001) Unnecessary Evil: History and Moral Progress in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (Albany: State University of New York Press).Google Scholar
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