Drew Pollhammer

On Kant’s Perfect Duty to Oneself Not to Lie:

An Exegesis and Critique

In The Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant devotes approximately twenty pages to the

moral category of perfect duties to oneself. Perfect duties to oneself are limiting and negative

duties; they restrict any rational agent from doing certain things which would contravene that

agent’s innate human dignity. Perfect duties, both to oneself and to others, refer to certain actions

which every rational agent has a duty not to effect. In Kant’s words: “Negative duties forbid a

human being to act contrary to the end of [her/his] nature”, where “nature” means, “the innate

dignity of a human being” (Practical Philosophy 544-545).

One example of a perfect duty is that of not lying, whether to others or to oneself. The

perfect duty against lying limits rational agents to only those actions which do not involve lying. In

the present essay I will offer an exegetical exposition of Kant’s arguments concerning the perfect

duty to oneself not to lie to others or to oneself, insofar as such actions are harmful to one’s own

innate dignity, and are thus morally impermissible. My analysis thus restricts its scope to a

discussion of the perfect duty not to lie within the moral category of perfect duties to oneself (as

opposed to perfect duties to others). I will show why Kant deems it morally impermissible to lie

inasmuch as lying transgresses the perfect duty to oneself to maintain one’s innate dignity.

Secondarily, I will offer a critique of Kant’s reliance on ‘natural purposiveness’ in his argument

against lying to oneself, and show that there are scenarios in which Kant’s moral philosophy could

be said to not only permit lying to oneself, but also promote it.

Kant’s main discussion of the perfect duty to oneself not to lie is found in §9 of Book I of

“The Doctrine of Virtue” in The Metaphysics of Morals. In this section, Kant writes: “The greatest
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violation of a human being’s duty to [herself/himself] regarded merely as a moral being (the

morality of [her/his] own person) is the contrary of truthfulness, lying” (552). Kant is categorical

about the impermissibility of lying. He writes that “no intentional untruth in the expression of one’s

thoughts can refuse [the] harsh name” of lying, and that, by effecting any lie, a human being

“annihilates [her/his] dignity” (552-553).

The reason for why one annihilates one’s dignity by lying concerns the fact that one’s

dignity hinges on the “natural purposiveness” of any human’s being able to communicate her/his

thoughts. For Kant, it is a natural end of human discourse that discourse be truthful. This is

because, by the dictates of the categorical imperative, one could not will a maxim that would permit

the universal permissibility of lying insofar as such a maxim would be self-refuting. This is to say

that if every human were to formulate a maxim that allowed the universal permissibility of lying,

communication would become impossible because there would be no reason to believe that any

speaker was speaking the truth. Thus, the natural ends of communication hinge on the moral duty

that no one lie. Insofar as human dignity is inextricably linked with a human’s capacity to act in

accordance with moral duty, one ‘annihilates one’s dignity’ when one lies.

One renounces one’s moral worth, and in a sense one’s humanity as well, inasmuch as to be

human is to act in accordance with natural ends (truthful communication) and moral duties (the

perfect duty not to lie). In fact, Kant considers the act of lying to bring one below the status of a

mere inanimate thing, inasmuch as things have use-value whereas lying corrupts the inherent use-

value of communication. On this point, Kant writes that lying amounts to a “renunciation by the

speaker of [her/his] personality, and such a speaker is a mere deceptive appearance of a human

being, not a human being [herself/himself]” (553).

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Most importantly for the present discussion, it is not the harm done to a person, or even the

good done for a person by the lie which makes the lie morally impermissible, but rather the very

fact that lying itself contravenes innate human dignity; and it is for this reason that the act of lying

effects the inner feeling of moral worthlessness in the liar. The liar transgresses, and thereby

renounces her/his own innate dignity in the act of lying. One has a duty to maintain one’s own

innate dignity, the natural end of humanness, but the act of lying contravenes and destroys this end.

The crux of the perfect duty to oneself not to lie is that one has a duty to oneself to maintain

one’s own dignity and to strive for perfection. To lie is to renounce such ends. Kant draws up the

distinction between “external lies” and “internal lies” to clarify this point. The ‘externality’ of lies

pertains to what makes a liar appear contemptible to others, i.e., to those who know that the liar is

lying. If it was solely the case that a liar was deemed contemptuous based on the fact others knew

that that the liar was lying to them, and thereby that the liar was compromising the generally agreed

upon imperative that discourse be truthful, then the liar would only be deemed contemptuous and

immoral to the extent that her/his lies corrupted the social fabric on which truthful (and thus

possible) communication rests. It is because the liar nefariously transgresses this social fabric that

others hold the liar in contempt. In this case the liar would only be immoral to the extent that s/he

has a perfect duty to others not to lie, which s/he has transgresses by way of the act of lying.

However, it is not merely the case that lying transgresses solely the perfect duty not to lie to

others. It is for this reason that Kant introduces the notion of the ‘internality’ of lies. An internal lie

is simply a lie recognized as such by the liar who commits the lie. When a liar recognizes that s/he

has lied s/he cannot but feel a sense of self-contempt for having renounced her/his humanity and

dignity. On this point, Kant writes: “By an external lie a human being makes [herself/himself] an

object of contempt in the eyes of others; by an internal lie [s/he] does what is still worse: [s/he]
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makes [herself/himself] contemptible in [her/his] own eyes and violates the dignity of humanity in

[her/his] own person” (552).

In another passage, Kant extends the significance of the immorality of lies to simple ‘white

lies’ or lies effected for seemingly good reasons, such as telling a friend that her/his book was

enjoyable (when, in fact, it was not). Another example of such a ‘lie for good’ (and a very common

one) occurs when, in a conversation, a person happily and almost unthinkingly says that they are

“doing well” (when in fact they are not) so as to maintain a sense of cheery lightness in a

conversation. Kant writes of the person who aims to achieve such an end as would effect the good

in such an albeit benignly untruthful way, that her/his “way of pursuing this end is, by its mere

form, a crime of a human being against [her/his] own person and a worthlessness that must make

[him/her] contemptible in [her/his] own eyes” (553).

Here, it is important to note, as Allen Wood does, that Kant is being a bit hyperbolic in his

moral zealousness; he is exercising a bit of “rhetorical exaggeration” in such blindly absolutist

passages (Wood 253). In fact, in the “Casuistical Questions” subsection of §9 of Book I of “The

Doctrine of Virtue”, Kant asks whether it might be permissible to close a letter with such honorific

lines as “your obedient servant”, when in reality one is not (and never can be, morally) truly

another’s obedient servant—for, of course, Kant admonishes all forms of servility insofar as they

entail a renunciation of some degree of dignity on the part of the servant. Yet certainly Kant’s

question must be answered in the positive, for such epistolary conventions are frivolous and

harmless. Kant himself certainly had no qualms about using such epistolary conventions, evidenced

most glaringly in his dedication to Baron von Zedlitz in the Critique of Pure Reason, wherein Kant

uses this very line, i.e., “your obedient servant”.

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Thus, I follow Allen Wood in contending that Kant exercises somewhat misleadingly

rhetorical hyperboles in his remarks about the absolute impermissibility of lying. Wood’s own

comments are concise on this point: “When we consider all of the evidence, it seems clearly not to

be Kant’s real opinion that all intentionally false statements display self-contempt and are

violations of duty to oneself. His statements that they are should be read as rhetorical exaggerations

rather than as literal doctrinal pronouncements” (Wood 253). Thus, there is no need to hold oneself

in self-contempt, and there is no renunciation of one’s innate dignity when one exercises certain

frivolous “lies”. (Perhaps “quasi-lie” is a better term for such frivolous lies).

Up until this point I have been discussing, in a broad way, the moral impermissibility of

lying inasmuch as it is a perfect duty to oneself that one maintain one’s innate dignity by not lying

and vice versa, that is, by not lying one thereby maintains one’s dignity (granted one does not

contravene other perfect duties either to oneself or to others). The perfect duty to oneself not to lie

is distinct from the perfect duty to others not to lie. One’s perfect duty to oneself not to lie is aimed

at maintaining one’s own innate dignity, whereas one’s perfect duty not to lie to others is aimed at

maintaining the natural end of truthful communication (and thereby respecting the dignity of others,

insofar as others too are worthy of our being truthful to them to the extent that they, like ourselves,

have innate human dignity).

At this point, there is a further important distinction to make with respect to the perfect duty

to oneself not to lie, namely, the distinction between the perfect duty to oneself not to lie to others

and the perfect duty to oneself not to lie to oneself. I have so far only discussed the former perfect

duty to oneself. I will now move into a discussion of Kant’s comments concerning the perfect duty

to oneself not to lie to oneself, as well as those actions of lying to oneself which Kant calls “inner

lies” (Kant 553). For purposes of clarity I call a rational agent’s lies to others, which are
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recognized, or internalized, as such—and they must be if they are intentional lies—by the rational

agent, ‘internalized outer lies’1. Following Mary Gregor’s translation of Kant’s The Metaphysics of

Morals, I call a rational agent’s lies to herself/himself, “inner lies”2. For Kant, inner lies are as

worthy of admonishment as ‘internalized outer lies’. Both kinds of lie, when effected, equally strip

the person who effects them of her/his dignity and humanity.

One example of an inner lie, which Kant describes in The Metaphysics of Morals, pertains

to the disingenuousness inherent in Pascal’s famous “wager” argument. On this point, Kant writes:

“Someone tells an inner lie, for example, if [s/he] professes belief in a future judge of the world,

although [s/he] really finds no such belief within [herself/himself] but persuades [herself/himself]

that it could do no harm and might even be useful to profess in [her/his] thoughts to one who

scrutinizes hearts a belief in such a judge, in order to win his favour in case he should exist”

(Practical Philosophy 553). In this scenario, one does not truly believe that there is such a judge,

but rather one deceives oneself into believing that there might well be such a judge and that it could

do no harm to feign belief in this judge if it could possibly yield positive consequences.

For Kant, such a disingenuous, or insincere, pseudo-holding of a belief, amounts to an inner

lie. This is just one example of an inner lie. Importantly, there are many other forms of inner lies

and deceptions. However, the scope of the present essay does not allow for an extended discussion

of the various forms of inner lies and deceptions. Suffice it to say that all of them, as with all lies

                                                                                                               
1
Allen Wood simply calls these “outer lies” (Wood 255). I am considering them as “internalized
outer lies” so as to highlight the extent to which the liar recognizes the lie as such, and
consequently feels the loss of dignity effectuated by such a recognition.
2
These distinctions leave open the question of what we might deem unintentional lies to others
(unrecognized lies to others) and unintentional lies to oneself, and whether such “lies” (if lies they
be) can really be called lies at all. Here, I restrict my discussion solely to intentional, or active,
inner lies.    
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more generally (barring the exceptions3) when carried out by a person, strip that person of her/his

dignity and humanity.

It is worthwhile to ask whether or not Kant’s moral philosophy admits of exceptions to the

rule of the perfect duty to oneself not to lie to oneself, i.e., not to commit inner lies. Might there be

scenarios in which it is permissible to commit inner lies? Above, I discuss a couple of the

exceptions with regard to the perfect duty (to others) not to lie to others, namely with regard to

frivolous lies (there are also the exceptions known as ‘necessary lies’, which I have not discussed

here). Here, I wish to argue against Kant’s dictum that one categorically cannot commit inner lies,

by offering what I consider to be an immanent critique of Kantian moral philosophy with respect to

what I consider to be its promotion of the effectuation of certain inner lies. A bit of preamble and

recap will be necessary to prove this point.

Kant’s notion of the perfect duty to oneself not to lie hinges on the natural purposiveness of

truthful communication. One cannot lie to others insofar as doing so would contravene the formal

law of the categorical imperative which amounts to the reality that one could not formulate a

maxim that would allow the universal permissibility of lying to the extent that such a maxim would

be self-refuting. Thus, the natural purposiveness of speech is truthfulness. We accept that

communication is possible, and communication is only possible, to the extent that we believe our

interlocutors are relaying the truth. Lying, by contrast, contravenes the natural purposiveness of

truth-telling communication, one’s own dignity and the dignity of others.

Analogously, Kant makes the arguments that suicide contravenes the natural purposiveness

of the preservation of one’s innate dignity, and the somehow worse yet act of masturbation

contravenes the natural purposiveness of procreation (and thereby one’s innate dignity). Similarly,

                                                                                                               
3
I.e., frivolous lies and necessary lies.
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for Kant, homosexual sex acts would contravene the natural purposiveness of “natural” human

sexual intercourse, i.e., procreation. But can we accept that there is such a thing as a ‘natural

purposiveness’ for procreation (or for human endeavour) and that homosexuality would be thereby

somehow “unnatural”? It seems to me that we cannot, and that on Kant’s position it would be

morally permissible that the truly homosexual person lie to her/himself so as to convince

herself/himself that s/he is not truly homosexual, in order to pursue the “natural ends” of human

procreation.

Of course, I don’t believe that Kant would think that homosexuality is natural, but that even

though this be the case, it is nevertheless true that over the course of the past many centuries there

have been truly, and I (and most contemporary scholars and individuals) would argue, ‘naturally’

homosexual individuals, (I do not think that many contemporary individuals would deny this); and

that these individuals, according to Kant’s position, should lie to themselves, in order to convince

themselves that they are not homosexual, and to try to go about seeing through the various “natural

purposes” of humanity.

I offer just this one example of a case where I think Kant would deem it permissible that

one lie to oneself so as to avoid the deleterious consequences of not only not engaging in the

natural purposes of humanity but engaging in acts which would contravene them. Moreover, I

believe that Kant’s moral philosophy promotes such inner lies inasmuch as Kant’s moral

philosophy would contend that it is permissible for one to convince oneself that one is not a

homosexual (even though one truly and “naturally” is) so that one can go about exercising natural

ends. I suspect that it would be equally plausible to make decisive arguments against the notion of a

natural purposiveness which would deem it impermissible to masturbate or kill oneself.

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Works Cited:

Kant, Immanuel. Practical Philosophy. Trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996.

Wood, Allen W. Kantian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.