Getting at the Root of Evil: Kant and Fichte on the Murderer at the Door

1 Introduction

Kant’s Formula of Humanity commands us to act in such a way that we always use humanity, “whether in [our] own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (GMS, 4: 429).^[1] Kantians have often thought that this version of the Categorical Imperative expresses a commitment to the view that our rational nature gives us a special unconditional value and shows that we have a dignity above all price. Respect is the moral attitude that all persons are entitled to in virtue of this unconditional value of their rational nature, regardless of merit.^[2] Some interpreters have also argued that the idea that all human beings deserve respect in virtue of their capacity for rational agency, regardless of merit, can help us understand the motivation for his uncompromising defense of the duty to be truthful in his famous essay, “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy,” where Kant claims that one is not allowed to lie, not even if a murderer comes to one’s door asking the whereabouts of their innocent victim who has taken refuge in one’s home.^[3] Yet, to many of Kant’s readers, this obviously seems like the wrong conclusion, because it seems to imply that our moral obligations leave us “powerless in the face of evil.”^[4] Even worse, our good actions can end up being instrumentalized for evil purposes, and we are thereby turned into “tools of evil.”^[5] In light of this apparent problem, scholars such as Christine Korsgaard and Tamar Schapiro have tried to mitigate the rigidity of Kant’s view by arguing that it is permissible to lie to an evildoer.^[6]

In this paper, I will show that Fichte offers an alternative strategy for resisting evil than that of interpreters of Kant who take him to advocate lying to the evildoer. My aim is to reconstruct a Fichtean approach to the general duty of truth-telling and to offer a qualified defense of his view by arguing that it is not vulnerable to the criticism that our good actions end up being instrumentalized for evil purposes. In this sense, Fichte’s rigorism concerning our obligation to tell the truth fares better than Kant’s.

Fichte presents his view on the case of the murderer at the door in his System of Ethics (1798), a little later than (and independently of) Kant’s essay. Like Kant, he concludes that we should not lie to an evildoer. As I will explain, in the System of Ethics, Fichte’s rigorism concerning our obligation to tell the truth follows from his perfectionism.^[7] By ‘perfectionism,’ I mean a moral theory according to which a person’s good consists in the perfection or full realization of her essential nature and capacities.^[8] On Fichte’s version of perfectionism, the perfection of each individual also involves a commitment to help others perfect their own nature.^[9] Our moral goal is thus the greatest development of rational nature, both in ourselves and in all other individuals. But as I will show, this commitment to perfect humanity is constrained by the requirement to respect each human being’s capacity to achieve perfection. That is, in no case can I disrespect one individual’s moral capacities to maximize the moral good of humanity.

This approach sets my reading apart from most scholars, who read Fichte either as a straightforward Kantian deontologist (Allen Wood) or as a maximizing consequentialist (Michelle Kosch).^[10] My view is that Fichte’s normative ethics integrates teleological components with deontological ones, unified through a perfectionist view.^[11] I argue that this allows Fichte to understand the general duty of truth-telling in a way that is not vulnerable to the special problem of telling the truth to an evildoer.

On Fichte’s view, I am not allowed to lie to an evildoer, because I have a duty to summon them to perfect their humanity by making choices that are fully rational.^[12] I will call this Fichtean view that we have an obligation to help others perfect their humanity by making choices that are fully rational the ‘perfectionist commitment.’ I will also argue that, far from leaving us “powerless in the face of evil,” Fichte’s uncompromising defense of the duty of truthfulness aims to get at the root of evil.^[13] As we shall see, on Fichte’s view, evil is the product of acting without sufficient consciousness of one’s duty in a particular situation.^[14] If I am confronted with evil, it is my duty to summon the evildoer to embark on the path of self-conscious reflection, a path that Fichte believes leads to moral goodness and maturity. I explain Fichte’s perfectionist approach to the prohibition against lying in section three of this paper.

In section four, I focus on Fichte’s views on the duty of truthfulness in his System of Ethics. Fichte also provides a specifically juridical grounding of a norm of unstinting honesty in his Foundations of Natural Right (1796).^[15] Only his ethical grounding of this norm provides a solution to the special problem of telling the truth to an evildoer such as the murderer at the door. Fichte’s separation of right from morality can be understood in terms of the specific value or end that each realm promotes. Both right and morality have as their end the realization of a specific conception of free subjectivity. But only the moral realm has as its end the realization of autonomy or moral freedom. By contrast, the political realm has as its end the realization of its members’ personhood or individuality.^[16] Both moral autonomy and free individuality require a form of self-determination. Yet only moral autonomy requires self-determination in accordance with categorical principles that derive from our own rational nature. Free individuality only requires self-determination in accordance with ends that are freely chosen (i. e., it is not a requirement of free choice that the ends chosen conform with the moral law). It is for this reason that only Fichte’s ethical grounding of the norm of truthfulness provides a solution to the problem of good actions being instrumentalized for evil purposes.

In section five, I briefly consider Fichte’s remarks on truth and lies in his essay “On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World” (1798), where Fichte suggests that belief in a providentially ordered world partly consists in the belief that life will provide us with opportunities to be summoned to perfect our own rational nature as well as with opportunities to summon others to perfect their rational nature. In this way, we all contribute to the realization of the final moral end, which Fichte conceives as a state of affairs in which all rational beings will have perfected their independence or freedom.

I conclude, in section six, by considering what can be said on behalf of Fichte’s uncompromising defense of the duty to be truthful, even if we do not believe in a providential world order. To offer a qualified defense of Fichte’s view and lend support to his diagnosis of evil, I draw a comparison between Fichte’s view that evil is the product of acting without sufficient reflection and Hannah Arendt’s view concerning the inner connection between evil and thoughtlessness.

Before turning to Fichte’s approach, I will first explain two different perspectives on Kant’s prohibition against lying to an evildoer and show that they both leave us with the same problem of powerlessness in the face of evil.

2 The Ethical and Juridical Approaches to Kant’s Prohibition against Lying^[17]

It is a point of dispute exactly how the Formula of Humanity and the unconditional value of our rational nature motivate Kant’s prohibition against lying to the murderer at the door. One approach adopts an ethical perspective on Kant’s prohibition against lying to an evildoer and a second approach adopts a political or juridical perspective.^[18] I will focus on the juridical perspective, according to which a lie wrongs humanity generally by bringing about the dissolution of the rightful condition.^[19] While this approach has received less attention, it has the interpretive advantage of more faithfully representing the motivation for Kant’s views. But as I will argue, this perspective still makes it difficult to defend Kant’s conclusion that it is wrong to lie to an evildoer such as the murderer at the door. Since Kant does not address the fact that the murderer is bringing about the dissolution of the rightful condition, it seems that his rigorism concerning truth-telling leaves us powerless in the face of evil, whether we approach it from an ethical or juridical perspective.

Christine Korsgaard and Onora O’Neill argue that Kant’s prohibition against lying follows from his moral philosophy, and more specifically, from the Formula of Humanity, in the following way: humanity or rational nature is the capacity to set ends and to determine oneself to act by the representation of those ends. For moral theories based on the value of humanity or rational nature, deception is one of the most serious forms of wrongdoing to another person: if I mislead you and cause you to believe something that is not true, I interfere with your capacity to think for yourself and to make your own decisions.^[20] If I cause you to act based on false information, I co-opt your agency by putting your actions in the service of an end you did not consent to further.^[21] For this reason, I am not allowed to lie, not even to save an innocent person from a murderer. Korsgaard provides a partial defense of Kant’s puzzling conclusion by drawing a distinction between ideal and nonideal theory, and by arguing that the Formula of Humanity upholds an ideal of human relations that it is sometimes impossible to realize. Under nonideal conditions, when the attempt to act in accordance with the moral law would turn us into a “tool of evil,” we may and perhaps even must depart from the ideal, for example, by lying to the murderer at the door.^[22] Korsgaard’s misgivings are symptomatic of the widespread view that the Kantian position is obviously wrong and needs to be fixed. Her partial defense of Kant’s conclusion clearly involves significant revision of Kant’s own views.

Another problem with her approach to Kant’s prohibition against lying is that Kant does not discuss lying as a violation of an ethical duty to another individual.^[23] In “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy,” Kant makes it clear that he is approaching the topic from a political or juridical perspective (not from an ethical perspective) and that he considers lying as a violation of a duty of right that wrongs no particular person, but only humanity in general. And in the “Doctrine of Virtue,” the second half of the Metaphysics of Morals, he discusses lying as a violation of a human being’s duty to himself as a moral being. In recent decades, some of Kant’s readers have noted this fact and used Kant’s Doctrine of Right to explain why his puzzling conclusion about the wrongfulness of lying to the murderer at the door follows from his political or juridical views.^[24]

Kant believes that we have an obligation to leave the state of nature and enter into a rightful condition by establishing and respecting a powerful and authoritative government. This is because we are obligated to respect each person’s innate right to external freedom, and we can only do so by submitting to the authority of the state.^[25] In the “Supposed Right to Lie” essay Kant argues that a lie wrongs humanity in general by bringing about the dissolution of the rightful condition, that is, the condition that is required to protect everyone’s right to external freedom. In the essay, Kant is responding to an earlier piece by the French philosopher Benjamin Constant, who attributes to Kant the view that “it would be a crime to tell a lie to a murderer who asked whether our friend who is being pursued by the murderer had taken refuge in our house” (VRL 8: 425).

In response to the question whether a person in this situation has the authorization, that is, the right, to be untruthful, Kant says:

Truthfulness in statements that cannot be avoided is the formal duty of man to everyone, however great the disadvantage that may arise therefrom for him or for any other […]. For a lie always harms another; if not some other human being, then it nevertheless does harm to humanity in general, inasmuch as it vitiates the very source of right. (VRL, 8: 426)

Both in the essay on lying and in the Doctrine of Right, Kant contrasts a formal wrong with a material wrong, or an “injustice against some individual person” (VRL, 8: 429–430; MS, 6: 308). A formal wrong is a violation of the postulate of public right: “when you cannot avoid living side by side with all others, you ought to leave the state of nature and proceed with them into a rightful condition” (MS, 6: 307). This violation of the postulate of public right does not transgress the right of humanity in the murderer’s person, but it does violate the right of humanity generally. This makes it clear that, on Kant’s view, lying is not a violation of an ethical duty to another individual (as Korsgaard argues), but a violation of the rights of humanity generally. As we have seen, this is because it is only possible to respect everyone’s right to external freedom under the rule of law, and Kant here argues that a lie “vitiates the source of right.” But how, exactly, does a lie bring about the dissolution of the rightful condition?

On Kant’s view, public rights are the rights of the people considered as a joint agent or general will. When people act jointly, they act as a state. It follows that the source of right is the general united will of the people; this is what characterizes the rightful condition. Yet if I lie to you, we cannot share a common deliberative standpoint and act with a united will. As Jacob Weinrib explains this point: “deception is incompatible with a united will and with the rights that proceed from the united will because a will cannot be united if the parties within the will are entitled to deceive each other by expressing one thing and meaning another.”^[26] In other words, if I deceive you, we cannot make choices that are ours.^[27]

With this interpretation of Kant’s view that a lie “vitiates the source of right” in hand, we can revisit the scenario of the murderer at the door. One reason why we might think Kant’s conclusion that we should not lie to the murderer is still the wrong conclusion, is that Kant does not address the fact that the murderer is interacting with others in ways that are obviously at odds with the source of right, the general united will of the people. The murderer’s actions make it clear that he is willing to bring about the dissolution of the rightful condition by violating others’ innate right to external freedom. Perhaps Kant would say that only the state has the right to enforce everyone’s rights, and we cannot take the law into our own hands. But once again, if we uphold Kant’s uncompromising defense of the duty to be truthful, our good actions end up being instrumentalized for evil purposes, and we are turned into “tools of evil.” So it seems that the ethical and juridical approaches to Kant’s prohibition against lying confront the same problem of powerlessness in the face of evil.

3 Fichte’s Perfectionist Approach to the Prohibition against Lying

As I mentioned in the introduction, I will argue that the aim of Fichte’s prohibition against lying in the System of Ethics is to get at the root of evil by summoning the evildoer to perfect their rational nature and act out of love for the good. It is telling that Fichte examines the case of the murderer at the door when he discusses the duty of truthfulness in System of Ethics, and not when he discusses this same obligation in his Foundations of Natural Right. In the Foundations, Fichte’s justification of the norm of unstinting honesty is very similar to Kant’s juridical account, which focuses on the norms that structure and govern rightful relations between individuals.^[28]

Let me begin by noting an important difference between Kant’s and Fichte’s views concerning what is involved in treating our own and every other human being’s capacity for the rational choice of ends as an end in itself. Kant says that rational nature must not be thought of “as an end to be effected but as an independently existing end and hence thought only negatively, that is, as that which must never be acted against and which must therefore in every volition be estimated never merely as a means but always at the same time as an end” (GMS, 4: 437). This passage suggests that, humanity or rational nature is not, on Kant’s view, something that we are to realize or bring into existence; it is already an independently existing end.^[29]

By contrast, the fundamental orientation of Fichte’s normative ethics is teleological.^[30] In the System of Ethics, Fichte maintains that the end or aim of moral action is to realize a state where “reason and reason alone should have dominion in the sensible world” (SL, 4: 275).^[31] So, on Fichte’s view, treating humanity as an end means striving to realize a condition where all human beings will have perfected their rational nature by acting “out of love for the good” (SL, 4: 284). The idea that our moral aim is right action done out of love for the good leads to the idea that our moral goal is the “formal freedom of all rational beings” (SL, 4: 276). For, as Fichte says, “no action is moral that does not occur with freedom” (SL, 4: 276). This is because moral action requires a form of self-conscious and reflective affirmation of the goodness of the action I am about to perform. This in turn requires the capacity to step back from all the impulses that affect me, to be aware of different lines of action and evaluate various possibilities, and to choose one of them and determine myself by forming a concept of the end I wish to realize. Formal freedom is thus the tendency or disposition to form intentions spontaneously based on the concept of ends. It is a form of self-determination through concepts or through thinking.^[32] As Michelle Kosch rightly notes, this is the form of freedom of the will that is “required for an agent to be morally responsible and an appropriate addressee of moral imperatives.”^[33]

Moreover, on Fichte’s view, formal freedom comes in degrees. One perfects one’s formal freedom first by setting oneself ends in general, then by limiting one’s freedom through the concept of the other’s freedom and positing oneself as standing in a relation of right with others, and ultimately by setting oneself the moral end. Thus, a person who is fully formally free is a person who acts morally (SL, 4: 276).

For our purposes, what matters is the idea that formal freedom is the form of freedom required for moral agency and responsibility, that this form of freedom requires having a multiplicity of action possibilities and determining oneself to act based on self-conscious evaluative reflection, and that this form of freedom comes in degrees.

In order to understand Fichte’s approach to the case of the murderer at the door, we first need to see how Fichte derives the duty of truthfulness from our duty to promote the formal freedom of all rational beings.^[34] Fichte explains that the formal freedom of an individual involves two elements in addition to those noted above: first, “the continuous reciprocal interaction between their body […] and the sensible world,” and second, the requirement that this interaction be “determined only through the individual’s freely designed concept concerning the character of this reciprocal interaction” (SL, 4: 276).

The first element of formal freedom results in a set of negative and positive duties concerning the cultivation and preservation of the body. For example, I should “never exercise any immediate influence over the body of the other,” and I may not seek to “move the other person’s will by constraint, beatings, hunger, withdrawal of freedom, or imprisonment” (SL, 4: 277–278). The prohibition against murder and suicide are derived from this duty to cultivate and preserve one’s own body and that of others. Considered positively, our duty is to promote the health, strength, and preservation of the other’s body and life (SL, 4: 280).

The second element of formal freedom results in a set of duties to preserve and promote every individual’s free influence upon the sensible world, mediated by their own intellect. An individual’s efficacious action “is supposed to produce what he is thinking of when he acts” (SL, 4: 282), so if they possess inaccurate or false information, this will interfere with their ability to carry out their intentions and to influence the sensible world. Thus, if I am to promote the free causality of my fellow human beings, I must not lie to them or deceive them, whether by asserting something that I do not consider to be true, or by providing information intended to deceive them (SL, 4: 283). My positive duty is to “promote correct insight on the part of others and actually to communicate to them any truth we ourselves might know” (SL, 4: 290). I should disclose any information that I am aware of that might be of practical relevance to other individuals. If I see that another human being is engaged in some action, and if I have reason to think that they have an incorrect view of the relevant circumstances, it is my duty to correct their error, for otherwise they might do something that is contrary to their own end (SL, 4: 291).

Now that we have seen how Fichte derives the duty of truthfulness from our duty to promote the formal freedom of others, we are prepared to examine Fichte’s defense of the duty of truthfulness and his view on the famous example of the murderer at the door.

4 Summoning the Murderer at the Door

In the System of Ethics, Fichte presents the scenario as follows:

A human being who is being persecuted by an enemy with a drawn sword hides himself in your presence. His enemy arrives and asks you where he is. If you tell the truth, then an innocent person will be murdered; hence, some would argue, you would have to lie in such a case. (SL, 4: 289)

Before presenting his own proposal concerning how to approach the situation, which we will discuss in a moment, Fichte argues that philosophers who judge that lying is the only way to save the victim’s life believe this not because they are interested in saving the innocent victim, but because they fear for their own life. Because they fear for their own safety, they do not realize that instead of lying, they could tell the murderer that they “do not owe him an answer, that he seems to harbor some quite evil intention, that [they] advise him to abandon his intention of his own free will, and that otherwise [they] will take up the cause of the persecuted party and will defend him at the risk of [their] own life — which is, in any case, [their] own absolute obligation” (SL, 4: 288). This would be the courageous approach to the situation, which would not require lying and would display genuine interest in saving the victim, even if that might also risk “turning the wrath [of the murderer] against [them]” (SL, 4: 288–289). Two things are worth noting about this first part of Fichte’s approach to the situation.

First, on Fichte’s view, the moral standpoint is completely impartial, so once I have adopted this standpoint, I should not let concern for my own safety prevent me from doing all that I can to protect an innocent victim. On Fichte’s view, my own life and the life of the victim have equal value. This is because both are ‘tools’ for the final end of perfecting rational nature, so that morality might have dominion over the sensible world.^[35] As Fichte says: “I absolutely ought to preserve my own life, as a tool of the moral law. For the same reason I also ought to preserve the life of the other person, which we are here assuming to be in danger. The moral law commands each of these things unconditionally” (SL, 4: 302).^[36]

Second, by claiming that philosophers who judge that lying is the only viable option in this situation do so out of fear for their own safety, Fichte seems to suggest that it is only with respect to personal advantage that the duty of truthfulness is absolute; the duty of truthfulness might not be absolute when it comes into conflict with other duties, such as the duty to promote the health, strength, and preservation of any person’s body and life.^[37] If so, then one would need to sort out this conflict of duties, perhaps by considering the relative importance of each duty for fulfilling the final moral end.

Yet it is clear that Fichte believes there is no such conflict in the case of the murderer at the door. In fact, Fichte suggests that the appearance of a conflict of duties (between the duty of truthfulness and the duty to preserve another person’s body and life) only arises in this situation because of what is at the root of all evil – namely, deliberative laziness (SL, 4: 199).^[38] This form of deliberative laziness is on Fichte’s view what leads us to fail to recognize what morality demands. As he says: “if one constantly reflects upon the demand of the law, if this demand always remains before one’s eyes, then it is impossible not to act in accordance with this demand or to resist it. If the law disappears from our attention, however, then it is impossible for us to act in accordance with it” (SL, 4: 192).^[39]

The philosopher who judges that lying is the only viable option in this situation arrives at this belief because their concern for their own safety obscures the course of action that is demanded by the moral law, which would require more deliberative effort. It is easier to get someone to do the right thing by bypassing their will and lying to them than it is to get them to do it because they have come to perceive it as right the thing to do. But as we have seen, our duty is not just legality, but morality, or right action done out of love for the good. Such philosophers might not be conscious that their tendency to laziness is leading them to “obscure” the demand of the moral law” (SL, 4: 193) and, thus, to believe that lying is permissible. So, Fichte’s task, as a philosopher, is to summon other philosophers to give up their deliberative laziness and the concomitant assumption that lying is permissible.

Philosophers who have overcome their laziness will see the course of action that is demanded by the moral law, a course of action that requires courage and effort. If the murderer at the door asks us whether his innocent victim is hiding in our presence, instead of telling the truth or a lie, we should try to get him to abandon his evil intention. This is how Fichte proposes to approach the murderer at the door:

First of all, why should you tell the person who asks you where the other is hiding either the truth or a lie? Why not tell him some third thing, something that lies in the middle: namely, that you do not owe him an answer, that he seems to harbor some quite evil intention, that you advise him to abandon this intention of his own free will […]. You reply that if you were to do this then he would turn his wrath against you. But why, I ask you, do you consider only this single possibility, inasmuch as, among all the things that are possible in this case, there is also a second possibility, namely, that the opponent will be so startled by your just and audacious resistance that he will desist from persecuting his enemy and will become calmer and open to negotiations? (SL, 4: 289)

The same reasons apply against anyone who might seek to excuse a lie by saying that he told it because he thereby wanted to prevent some wrongdoing. He ought to hate the wrongdoing and to prevent it because it is immoral, and by no means for the sake of the action as such. He can tell the truth to someone who asks him for it with an evil intent, but if he is aware of the other person’s evil intent then he ought to remonstrate with him and seek to convince him of the blameworthiness of his intentions (SL, 4: 284–5)

The course of action that Fichte proposes in each of these passages is somewhat different, but in both cases, the aim is to get to what Fichte considers to be at the root of evil – again, the failure to act with sufficient reflection.

Fichte suggests that if the murderer were to step back and reflect on what he^[40] is about to do (if he were to act with sufficient formal freedom), he would recognize the blameworthiness of his intention and see that there are other possible courses of action open to him, courses of action that would enable him to become a ‘tool’ of morality. He suggests that if we set an example of self-conscious, free reflective moral action, the example might enable the murderer to realize that they are capable of acting in a similar fashion.^[41]

In other words, I read these two passages in light of what Fichte in the Foundations of Natural Right calls a “summons to free self-activity” or “upbringing” (GNR, 3: 39).^[42] As Kosch explains, the summons is the “origin of both reflective self-consciousness and the disposition to form second-order evaluative attitudes and so to impose normative demands of any kind upon oneself.”^[43] A summons involves the demand to exercise one’s free efficacy in a way that does not interfere with the summoner’s own free efficacy, and this demand must be issued in a way that does not interfere with the free efficacy of the summoned; it may not involve force. Fichte also brings up the summons in the System of Ethics, giving it a revised role in moral philosophy (SL, 4: 218–221). Both in the Foundations and in the System of Ethics, Fichte argues that I first discover that I am free when my freedom is presented to me by another who demands that I freely limit or restrain my activity in some way. When the summons is successful, this presentation of my own freedom becomes the object of my respect.^[44]

I take this account to inform Fichte’s thoughts concerning how one should interact with the murderer at the door. Above all, Fichte invites us to model loving optimism about the other agent’s capacity for moral improvement and to display our recognition of our duty to promote such improvement, so that we might all serve as ‘tools of morality.’ We have seen that, on Fichte’s view, our moral goal is the perfection of the “formal freedom of all rational beings” (SL, 4: 276); achieving this form of freedom is what constitutes moral improvement. Promoting this form of freedom is always our duty, even when we are interacting with our enemies. As Fichte says:

I should view my fellow human beings only as tools of the moral law […]. Even if a person is not now a tool of the moral law, I am never permitted to give up hope that he will be able to become such a tool […]. This also holds in the case of my enemy. I ought to love him; i. e., I ought to believe him to be capable of improvement. And I ought to demonstrate this love through my deeds; i. e., I ought to work as much as I can toward his improvement. (SL, 4: 312)

As we have seen, instead of lying, Fichte proposes that we advise the murderer to abandon their evil intention of their own free will. By modeling truthfulness and interest in the moral improvement of the evildoer, we invite them to enter into a shared practical standpoint and to join the moral community, conceived as a realm of joint participation in a shared activity oriented towards a final moral end, the end of perfected rationality.^[45] When we model truthfulness, we exhibit a form of action that is governed by the ideal of this sort of moral community. We can only model this form of action in the presence of the murderer, because their own actions clearly are not governed by this ideal. Insofar as this ideal is an ideal of joint participation in a shared activity, when the actions of the person with whom I am interacting are not also governed by the same ideal, my own side of the interaction can only simulate the form of reciprocity that the ideal presupposes.^[46] I am truthful in this aspirational mode, in the hope that the person with whom I am interacting will observe my actions and discern how they are governed by the ideal of joint participation in a moral community; if they come to appreciate the value of that ideal, that might lead them to adopt the ideal as their own. Perhaps they will not immediately adopt the ideal of joint participation in a moral community, but the interaction might plant a seed that will bear fruit in years to come.

Let us suppose that the murderer is angrily pursuing their victim because they owe them a large sum of money that they have promised but failed to pay back. Anger is often occasioned by the belief that we have been wronged, and taking revenge can be perceived as the only way to repair the injury or harm.^[47] Anger often obscures our perception of other practical alternatives. By modeling truthfulness and interest in the moral improvement of the murderer, we show them that it is possible to step back and evaluate our reactive attitudes, in order to consider whether there is a better course of action than the one we are currently pursuing, which would enable us to address the fact that we have been wronged, while also showing concern for the moral improvement of our enemies. By observing how we handle our enemies, the murderer might “become calmer and open to negotiations” (SL, 4: 289). In other words, by observing how we try to invite our enemies to inhabit a shared practical standpoint and to join the moral community, the murderer might realize that they can invite their enemies to do the same. They might come to realize that murdering their debtor is not an effective way to get their money back, nor will it help the debtor understand why they should not have promised to repay the money if they were in no position to do so. They might instead propose a repayment plan to their debtor, or give them the money as a gift, after understanding the difficulty of their debtor’s situation. This is the sort of world and the sort of moral community that Fichte is inviting us to imagine and to realize.

In sum, Fichte’s view concerning our obligation to tell the truth goes together with his version of perfectionism. By ‘perfectionism,’ I mean a moral theory according to which a person’s good consists in the perfection or full realization of her essential nature and capacities. As we have seen, Fichte derives the duty of truthfulness from our duty to promote the formal freedom of all rational beings. On Fichte’s view, I am not allowed to lie to you, because that would interfere with, rather than promote, your formal freedom. I have also argued that Fichte’s views on our moral obligation to tell the truth do not leave us powerless in the face of evil; instead, Fichte’s aim is to get at the root of evil. On Fichte’s view, evil is the product of acting without sufficient reflection and never attaining adequate consciousness of one’s duty in a particular situation.^[48] For this reason, if I am confronted with evil, it is my duty to summon the evildoer to embark on the path of self-conscious reflection, which leads to moral goodness.

5 Fichte’s Approach to the Prohibition Against Lying in “Divine Governance”

Having discussed Fichte’s views on the duty of truthfulness in the System of Ethics, I will now briefly consider his remarks on truth and lies in his essay “On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World.” As is well known, this essay led to the famous “atheism controversy” and to Fichte’s dismissal from his position at Jena.^[49]

In this essay, Fichte argues that religious belief amounts to nothing more than belief in a providential moral world order; the traditional belief that God is a particular being who causes this moral world order and is distinct from both individual human beings and the world is superfluous. As I mentioned at the start of this paper, Fichte suggests that believing that the sensible world is providentially governed means believing that life will place us in situations where we will have the opportunity to be summoned to perfect our own rational nature, and where we will have the opportunity to summon others to perfect their rational nature. Given this providential order, we are not allowed to engage in defensive deception to prevent another person’s wrongdoing, because doing so would involve shunning our duty to contribute to the final moral end of perfecting our own rationality and that of others. It is in this context that he makes the following remarks about lying:

Anyone willing to do what is evil in order to obtain good results is a godless person. In a morally governed world, good can never come from evil; and, as surely as you believe in such a moral governance of the world, it is impossible for you to think that it could. – You are not permitted to lie, even if the world should fall into ruin as a consequence of your refusal to do so. This, however, is no more than a figure of speech, for if you were able to believe, in all seriousness, that the world would crumble [as a consequence of your refusal to lie], then, at the very least, your own nature would be utterly self-contradictory and self-destroying. But this is precisely what you do not believe; nor can you believe it, nor are you permitted to do so. You know that a lie is certainly not included within the plan of the world’s preservation. (GGW, 5: 186)

At first blush, Fichte’s defense of the duty of truthfulness here seems quite different in spirit from his defense of the duty of truthfulness in the System of Ethics. As I mentioned earlier, in the System of Ethics, Fichte says that the end or aim of moral action is to realize a state of affairs where “reason and reason alone should have dominion in the sensible world” (SL, 4: 275). This shows that the fundamental orientation of Fichte’s normative ethics in the System of Ethics is teleological. Fichte derives our duties to others by showing how they contribute to the realization of the final moral end, and he judges whether particular actions are morally correct or not based on whether they lie on the path that leads toward this final moral end.^[50] Deception is prohibited because it does not promote but instead interferes with a rational agent’s formal freedom, with their disposition to form intentions spontaneously based on the concept of ends. In “Divine Governance,” Fichte argues that deception is wrong, but not because of the consequences it fails to bring about. Indeed, Fichte argues that “true atheism, genuine unbelief and godlessness, consists in pettifogging over the consequences of one’s actions, in refusing to hearken to the voice of one’s own conscience until one believes that one has first foreseen the success of the same” (GGW, 5: 186). In other words, while Fichte’s defense of the duty of truthfulness in the System of Ethics seems to lend support to the view that the fundamental orientation of Fichte’s normative ethics is teleological, his defense of the duty of truthfulness in the “Divine Governance” essay seems to lend support to the view that the fundamental orientation of Fichte’s normative ethics is deontological.^[51]

Despite this apparent difference between the two arguments, I believe that the teleological orientation of Fichte’s defense of the duty of truthfulness in the System of Ethics is compatible with the deontological orientation of his argument in “Divine Governance,” but only if we take seriously the religious dimension of his thought. If we consider what belief in a providential moral world order involves, we will see that it fundamentally involves the belief that the world is ordered teleologically, such that different events, circumstances, actions, and agents will contribute towards an ideal end. Different conceptions of providence will result in different conceptions of the final end. Yet if there is a providential world order, individual agents will not always be able to discern how particular events, circumstances, and actions do in fact contribute towards the final end. For this reason, individual agents are enjoined to focus on acting on principle or for the right reasons, and liberated from the task of calculating the benefits to be achieved or the harms to be averted in doing so. This is because in a world that is providentially ordered, acting on principle should result in good consequences, and there should be no conflict but only harmony between good principles and good consequences. As Fichte says, “in a morally governed world, good can never come from evil; and, as surely as you believe in such a moral governance of the world, it is impossible for you to think that it could” (GGW, 5: 186).

Returning to the example of the murderer at the door, a person who believes that the world is providentially ordered can act on principle and not lie to the murder, because they trust that all good actions will contribute to the final moral end. A person who believes that the world is providentially ordered trusts that if they have the courage to confront the murderer and summon them to step back and reflect on what they are about to do, they might recognize the blameworthiness of their intention and see that there are other practical alternatives. Or, failing that, they trust that their action will contribute positively to the world in some other way. For a person who believes in a providential world, there is no conflict between teleological and deontological orientations. Thus, the apparent evidence of both teleological and deontological orientations in Fichte’s normative ethics need not indicate any fundamental tension or inconsistency in his theoretical commitments.

6 Fichte and Arendt on Evil as the Product of Thoughtlessness

I have argued above that Fichte’s defense of the duty to be truthful and his view that we should not lie to the murderer at the door rely on the idea that, in a morally governed world, different circumstances, events, and actions contribute towards an ideal end. If that is the case, can Fichte’s uncompromising defense of the duty to be truthful persuade people who do not believe in a providential world order? If, as is often done, we replace the murderer at the door with a Nazi officer looking for Jewish people hiding in others’ homes during the Second World War, Fichte’s views might seem hopelessly naïve.^[52] Could Fichte really mean to say that people hiding Jews in their homes should have confronted the Nazis, in the hope that they would be so “startled by [our] just and audacious resistance that [they would] desist from persecuting [their] enemy and [would] become calmer and open to negotiations?” (SL, 4: 289).

Let me try to offer a qualified defense of Fichte’s view, which focuses on his diagnosis of evildoing. As we have seen, the reason why Fichte believes we should not lie to an evildoer is that he believes evil is the product of acting without sufficient reflection. If I am confronted with evil, it is my duty to summon the evildoer to embark on the path of self-conscious reflection, a path that Fichte believes leads to moral goodness. So on Fichte’s view, the root of evil is a form of thoughtlessness.

In 1961, Hannah Arendt witnessed the end of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major figures in the organization of the Holocaust. In her report on the trial, Arendt makes a similar point about an inner connection between evil and the inability to think. Commenting on what it was like to listen to Eichmann, she writes: “the longer one listened to [Eichmann], the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think.”^[53] After the trial, Arendt became increasingly preoccupied with the question of the relationship between thinking and evil. She explicitly addressed this issue in an essay published in 1971, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” which was later integrated into The Life of the Mind. Eichmann’s “total absence of thinking” attracted her interest and led her to ask the following questions:

Is our ability to judge, to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly, dependent upon our faculty of thought? Do the inability to think and a disastrous failure of what we commonly call conscience coincide? […] Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining and reflecting upon whatever happens to come to pass, regardless of specific content and quite independent of results, could this activity be of such a nature that it ‘conditions’ men against evil-doing.^[54]

For Arendt, thinking is a specific sort of rational activity, a silent internal dialogue that enables us to examine accepted rules of conduct, so that we will not be swept away unthinkingly “by what everyone else does and believes in.”^[55] Thinking results in conscience as its by-product, and has a “liberating effect” on the faculty of judgment, “the faculty of judging particulars, the ability to say, ‘this is wrong,’ ‘this is beautiful.’”^[56]

What Arendt means by ‘thinking’ is similar to what Fichte means by ‘reflection.’ Both thinkers argue that there is an inner connection between a form of thoughtlessness and evil. Both thinkers conclude that moral goodness requires thoughtful or conscientious action. On Fichte’s view, moral goodness also requires acquiring a sufficiently firm conviction, before acting, about what a particular situation demands. If the convictions of others conflict with our own, we must communicate and seek to “make our own judgment harmonize with that of the other” (SL, 4: 233). This helps to clarify how reflection might lead to changes of belief. Ultimately, the “necessary goal of all virtuous people is […] unanimous agreement concerning the same practical conviction and concerning the uniformity of acting that ensues therefrom” (SL, 4: 236). Had Eichmann engaged in this form of thoughtful communicative action, had he engaged in this form of “reciprocal interaction” and “conflict of minds” (SL, 4: 235), perhaps he would have found it more difficult to accept that what he had once considered a crime, he now considered his duty. Instead, as Arendt noted, he accepted this new code of moral judgment “as though it were nothing but another language rule.”^[57] In the System of Ethics, Fichte surmises that anyone who flees the form of reciprocal interaction whose aim is unanimous agreement concerning practical convictions does so “to avoid any disturbance of their own belief” (SL, 4: 235). In his own handwritten notes, Eichmann describes his distaste towards this sort of disturbance: “Now that I look back, I realize that a life predicated on being obedient and taking orders is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such a way reduces to a minimum one’s need to think.”^[58]

Perhaps some of us will find it difficult to accept the providential framework that informs Fichte’s view that we should not lie, not even to an evildoer. But I hope my brief remarks on Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann lend support to the Fichtean view that a form of thoughtlessness is at the root of evil. If their diagnosis of evil is correct, then the only way to cut off evil at its source (as opposed to merely thwarting its exercise or deflecting it) is through the engagement involved in the summons. This will be true even if the success rate of attempts to summon another to reflective or conscientious action is mixed. For this reason, if we are confronted with evil, lying to prevent wrongdoing will not get at the root of the difficulty. What we can do is model what reflective communicative action looks like, and invite or summon the other to engage in this form of “reciprocal interaction” and “conflict of minds.” As Fichte says, “even if a person is not now a tool of the moral law, I am never permitted to give up hope that he will be able to become such a tool […]. This also holds in the case of my enemy (SL, 4: 312). Having hope in the outcome of this conflict of minds is, I think, not only necessary to interact with our enemies, but also to be good philosophers and good educators.

7 Conclusion

In this article I have reconstructed and offered a qualified defense of a Fichtean approach to the general duty of truthfulness. I have argued that this Fichtean approach is not vulnerable to the familiar criticism that our good actions can end up being instrumentalized for evil purposes and we are thereby turned into tools of evil. For this reason, Fichte’s rigorism concerning our obligation to tell the truth fares better than Kant’s.

As I explain, Fichte’s prohibition against lying is entailed by his perfectionist view that we have a duty to summon evildoers to perfect their humanity by making choices that are fully rational. This general framework informs his approach to the special case of the murderer at the door. On Fichte’s view, the murderer at the door does not fully possess the form of freedom that constitutes perfected rationality. What he says about how we should interact with this individual suggests that he believes it is our moral duty to summon them to exercise and perfect their own formal freedom. Moreover, because Fichte thinks that evil is the product of insufficient reflection, he also believes that the murderer will abandon their evil intention if they accept our summons to engage in self-conscious reflection. In other words, if the summons interaction is successful, the life of the innocent victim will have been saved, and the murderer will be morally reformed. Fichte’s belief in a providential world order supports his confidence that the summons interaction will contribute towards an ideal moral end, if not immediately, at least in the long run. Even if we do not share Fichte’s belief in providence, we might, like Arendt, accept his diagnosis of evil. If we accept some version of the view that evil is the product of a form of thoughtlessness, then the only way to cut off evil at its source is through the kind of interaction that Fichte calls a summons. While my aim here has not been to defend Fichte’s diagnosis of evil, it is worth noting that it seems a version of Socratic intellectualism – the view that virtue is knowledge and that evil stems from ignorance.