Rethinking Sincerity and Authenticity: The Ethics of Theatricality in Kant, Kierkegaard, and Levinas

By Howard Pickett

"This above all: To thine own self be true," is an ideal—or pretense—belonging as much to Hamlet as to the carefully choreographed realms of today’s politics and social media. But what if our "true" selves aren’t our "best" selves? Instagram’s curated portraits of authenticity often betray the paradox of our performative selves: sincerity obliges us to be who we actually are, yet ethics would have us be better.

Drawing on the writings of Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, and Emmanuel Levinas, Howard Pickett presents a vivid defense of "virtuous hypocrisy." Our fetish for transparency tends to allow us to forget that the self may not be worthy of expression, and may become unethically narcissistic in the act of expression. Alert to this ambivalence, these great thinkers advocate incongruent ways of being. Rethinking Sincerity and Authenticity offers an engaging new appraisal not only of the ethics of theatricality but of the theatricality of ethics, contending that pursuit of one’s ideal self entails a relational and ironic performance of identity that lies beyond the pure notion of expressive individualism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Release date: Oct 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9780813940168

Book preview

STUDIES IN RELIGION AND CULTURE

John D. Barbour and Gary L. Ebersole, Editors

University of Virginia Press

© 2017 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

First published 2017

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pickett, Howard, 1973– author.

Title: Rethinking sincerity and authenticity : the ethics of theatricality in Kant, Kierkegaard, and Levinas / Howard Pickett.

Description: Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2017. | Series: Studies in religion and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017011907 | ISBN 9780813940151 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813940168 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Authenticity (Philosophy) | Performance. | Sincerity. | Theater—Moral and ethical aspects. | Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804. | Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813–1855. | Levinas, Emmanuel.

Classification: LCC B105.A8 P53 2017 | DDC 170.92/2—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011907

Cover art: Flayed man holding his own skin, attributed to Gaspar Becerra, from Juan Valverde de Amusco, Historia de la composicion del cuerpo humano, 1556

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: The Ethics of Theatricality/The Theatricality of Ethics

PART I. KANT: SINCERITY AND THE PROBLEM OF IMPERFECTION

1.The Trouble with Lying: Kant, Character, and Self-Congruence

2.Virtuous Hypocrisy: Incongruence in Kant’s Quest for Character

PART II. KIERKEGAARD: SINCERITY AND THE PROBLEM OF INEXPRESSIBILITY

3.Inevitable Insincerity: Inwardness and Outwardness in Kierkegaardian Ethics and Faith

4.Hidden Lives, Ironic Selves: Kierkegaard and the Rise (and Fall) of Authenticity

PART III. LEVINAS: SINCERITY AND THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALISM

5.Fearsome Authenticity: Levinas and the Rehabilitation of Sincerity

6.Beyond Sincerity: Levinasian Substitution in the Theater of Transcendence

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NEEDLESS TO SAY, this book could not have been written without the support of others. Thanks to my former teachers, especially Larry D. Bouchard, James F. Childress, M. Jamie Ferreira, and Steven G. Smith. For input on earlier drafts or arguments, thanks to Eric Brandt, Talbot Brewer, Jonathan Eastwood, Nathaniel Goldberg, Jacob Goodson, Peter Kang, Hank Koransky, Jeffrey Kosky, Charles Lowney, James Mahon, Charles Mathewes, Margaret Mohrmann, Richard Rosengarten, Angela Smith, Daniel Weiss, and two anonymous readers. I am grateful for the moral and professional support of my colleagues at Washington and Lee University, especially those in the Shepherd Program for the Interdisciplinary Study of Poverty and Human Capability. I am also grateful to the Offices of the Provost and Dean of the College at my home institution, as well as to George Roupe, Marilyn Bliss, Ellen Satrom, and everyone at the University of Virginia Press. Most of all, thanks and thanks and ever thanks to my family, especially Bob, Jeneva, Clara, Foster, and Holly, without whom nothing.

ABBREVIATIONS

Kant’s Works

German text and citations from Kants gesammelte Schriften.

Kierkegaard’s Works

Danish text and citations from Søren Kierkegaards Samlede Værker unless otherwise noted.

Levinas’s Works

INTRODUCTION

The Ethics of Theatricality/ The Theatricality of Ethics

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE, / And all the men and women merely players is a sentiment that neither debuts nor disappears with Shakespeare. ¹ Plato, Seneca, and Saint Paul, among others, adopt the theatrum mundi (theater of the world) analogy to highlight resemblances between human existence and theatrical performance. ² More recently, dramaturgical sociologists (Erving Goffman) have analyzed social roles and interactions using theatrical metaphors.³ Psychologists and advocates of drama therapy (Jean Piaget) have affirmed imitation’s formative role in cognitive and moral development.⁴ And philosophers (Judith Butler) have emphasized the performative aspects of identity.⁵ Clearly, whatever their differences, these examples (modern, premodern, and postmodern) reveal that the theatrical character of human character is here to stay.

However—and now we come to the problem that animates this book—while being human is theatrical, being theatrical is (on the face of it at least) unethical. In particular, to seem other than I am—to play a part on the stage of the world—sounds dishonest, insincere, inauthentic. Worse, if the person (from the Latin for mask) is actor-like, yet being actor-like is hypocritical (from the Greek for stage-actor), then being ethical may be impossible. Alternatively, if moral development and deliberation demand actorly imitation (whether of moral exemplars or neighbors in need), then being a good human may require virtuous hypocrisy.

Confusion about the ethics of theatricality—pretending to be other than I am, in particular—threatens the coherence of the ethical self.⁶ On the one hand, the actor exemplifies insincerity and hypocrisy.⁷ Through the pretension that defines the profession, the actor flouts the ideal of congruence between what I seem to be and what I actually am. On the other hand, pretension (or something very much like it) occupies a pivotal place in our moral lives. Pretending to be other than I am (e.g., emulating a role model) may serve the cultivation of my moral character; if advocates of moral habituation are right, I just might have to fake it ’til I make it. Pretending to be other than I am (e.g., imaginatively reversing roles in order to do unto others as I would have them do unto me) may also inform my moral deliberations.

Underlying this confusion about the ethics of theatricality is a related confusion about the ethics of personal unity. Often—too often, I contend—we regard self-congruence (sincerity, authenticity, integrity) as an absolute, unqualified good. So strong is its allure that self-congruence has become unrepudiable by moderns, while in-congruence (hypocrisy, insincerity, inauthenticity) has become the only unforgivable sin.⁸ All the world’s a stage, yet to be other than I am runs counter to another Shakespearean motto: This above all—to thine own self be true.⁹ What we too rarely acknowledge, however, is that a thoroughgoing self-congruence would preclude ethics and moral development altogether. To be other than I am— for example, to overcome a characteristic moral flaw—is a fundamental ethical impulse. More to the point, "to pretend to be other than I am" may be the best I can manage; it may also be my best bet for becoming the better self I ought to be.

The Approach

Given its focus on the moral dimensions of self-congruence, the following study combines normative ethics (What ought I to do? How ought I to be?) with philosophical/theological anthropology (What am I? Who am I?). Each chapter considers both: (1) What does a thinker’s understanding of the self imply about sincerity, authenticity, and related virtues or obligations? and (2) What does a thinker’s view of sincerity or authenticity imply about the self? Through this back and forth between the moral and the anthropological, tensions between conceptions of the self and conceptions of the right, the good, and the virtuous arise. Moreover, through this back and forth, the need for a reappraisal of self-congruence—and theatricality—emerges.

To be sure, reappraisal of long-standing moral concepts—in this case, sincerity, authenticity, hypocrisy—requires an approach that avoids begging the question of each concept’s worth. To overcome the stubborn moral connotations of the terms involved, my argu ment relies on several strategies, including, first, the use of idiosyncratic (arguably less loaded) language. Notably, sincerity and authenticity are said to be species of self-congruence—a term adapted from Lionel Trilling’s influential definition of sincerity: congruence between avowal and actual feeling.¹⁰

Second, oxymoronic language also plays a part here—most conspicuously in virtuous hypocrisy. Granted, hypocrite has long been a normative—and negative—term.¹¹ However, like other thick concepts from our moral vocabulary, hypocrite does more than prescribe—or, in this case, proscribe—it also describes a particular way of being.¹² The hypocrite is, in Saint Thomas Aquinas’s words, a person who simulates another.¹³ Though often vicious, simulation may sometimes be positive, even virtuous. Conversely, sincerity—faithful expression of one’s inner thoughts—may sometimes be negative, if not downright vicious. Idiosyncratic and paradoxical phrases aim to capture surprising moral possibilities that shake us out of our moral slumber, an aim shared with my third and final approach to reassessment.

Despite its dependence on the idiosyncratic and the paradoxical, my argument relies above all on the theatrical. Specifically, I find in ethicists’ own more or less theatrical metaphors an invitation to rethink the role of sincerity and authenticity in a good life. To that end, the following chapters draw out the theatricality within (and sometimes between) the lines of three of self-congruence’s most influential advocates: Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55), and Emmanuel Levinas (1906–95). Each thinker’s ambivalence toward theatricality informs this reassessment of self-congruence.

Although no history, the following study acknowledges that views of sincerity and authenticity can, and often do, change over time. If nothing else, juxtaposing thinkers from three different periods— Kant (eighteenth century), Kierkegaard (nineteenth century), and Levinas (twentieth century)—reveals that self-congruence (its possibility, value, and meaning) varies with different thinkers and also with historically evolving views of the right, the good, and the self. As others have argued, more controversially, juxtaposing modern thinkers’ views with those of their premodern counterparts also reveals that sincerity, like authenticity, is a unique modern invention.¹⁴

A Brief History

SINCERITY’S DEVELOPMENT

According to literary critic Lionel Trilling, [A]t a certain point in its history the moral life of Europe added to itself a new element, the state or quality of the self which we call sincerity.¹⁵ Previously used of pure or unadulterated things (sincere wine), sincerity eventually became a characteristic of persons.¹⁶ In his formative work on the subject, Trilling advances the idea that the virtue of sincerity (not simply the term) came into existence in early modernity—in large part, because of a decisive increase in the rate of social [and geographic] mobility.¹⁷ The newly ordered (or disordered) postfeudal world provoked new questions: Is this stranger as trustworthy as he claims to be? For that matter, is he even who he claims to be?

To these and other socioeconomic influences, early modern historian John Jeffries Martin adds distinctly theological influences—chiefly, a Protestant emphasis on human sinfulness (e.g., Calvinism’s total depravity).¹⁸ According to Martin, the theological anthropology of the Reformers (Martin Luther, John Calvin) precluded an earlier medieval ideal—namely, concordia, the harmonious agreement, not so much between insides and outsides as between creature and Creator. Medieval thinkers (Francis of Assisi) viewed life as a quest to recover the imago Dei (image of God) in which humans were created; however, [o]nce the idea of similarity or likeness between God and the human person had been ruptured . . . actions and words were viewed as expressing . . . the internal, particular, and even unique ‘self’ within.¹⁹ In later years, conformity with an external ideal became, not simply (and regrettably) unachievable, but also undesirable. Being true to oneself became preferable to imitating another (divine or otherwise). Ironically, by that account, the modern expressivist ideal owes its ascent to a recognition of how unworthy we are for self-expression.

Although less concerned with sincerity than its close cousin authenticity, philosopher Charles Taylor anticipates much in Martin’s argument. Because it presumes one’s true identity lies within, the modern sincerity ideal exhibits the growth of forms of inwardness and expressivism that Taylor says characterize the modern self.²⁰ Prior to the development of the inward self, one could hardly imagine, let alone idealize, sincerity—in the words of Reformed theologian Jonathan Edwards, an honest conformity of some profession or outward show of some inward property or act of mind, to the truth and reality of it.²¹

Whether or not it uniquely belongs to modernity, sincerity enjoyed a prominence during this period that is hard to deny. Even if aspects of the sincere mode have characterized human action in all societies at all times, sociologist of religion Adam Seligman seems right to add that the modernist or Enlightenment project has particularly privileged them.²² Consequently, a concern with the inner wellsprings of action and sincerity has become almost an icon of modernist culture.²³ In another critic’s words, Sincerity, authenticity, ‘being true to oneself’—these are the reigning virtues in modernity.²⁴ Like Martin, Seligman links sincerity’s rise with Protestant reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin.²⁵ The commitment to sincerity exhibits itself especially well in Calvin’s own personal emblem, a heart held out to God, in some cases above the motto Prompte et Sincere (Promptly and Sincerely)—in its longer version, "cor meum tibi offero Domine prompte et sincere" (Lord, I offer you my heart directly and purely). In lieu of concordia—or a related imitatio Dei (imitation of God)—the best we can manage, Calvin’s seal implies, is cordis sinceritas (sincerity of heart).²⁶

Of course, sincerity’s story continues long after the Reformation—as do debates about sincerity’s meaning, value, and history. In simplest terms, what began, first and foremost, as a vertical relation (a wholehearted, transparent way of relating to God) became with time a horizontal relation (a way of relating to one’s neighbors) before becoming transformed yet again (albeit this time under the guise of authenticity) into a self-relation. Even with these adaptations or, better, accretions, sincerity (whether to God, neighbor, or self) has become indispensable to our self-conception and also to our moral worldview. Unfortunately, despite its pivotal role in modernity—one virtually coextensive with the culture of four centuries²⁷—sincerity has received little philosophical attention in recent years, an oversight this book means to correct.²⁸

SINCERITY’S PROMINENCE

Whether invented in modernity or not, sincerity provoked unprecedented interest—and, for that matter, unparalleled praise—beginning around the sixteenth century. By the end of the eighteenth century, Kant’s contemporary, William Godwin, can remark, "Sincerity, a generous and intrepid frankness, will still be found to occupy perhaps the first place in the catalogue of human virtues."²⁹ In the archbishop of Canterbury’s estimation a century earlier, sincerity is "the highest commendation, and the very best character, that can be given of any man."³⁰

Like most virtues, self-congruence and its value, in particular, typically goes unexamined—evidence, some say, of a thoughtless cult or jargon of sincerity/authenticity.³¹ When examined, however, its value is said to rest on its foundational role in character. The primer Moral Education (1904) concludes, "Of these virtues [that made Abraham Lincoln virtuous and that should make the next generation of Americans virtuous], sincerity is the most fundamental, since it is the very basis of character.³² In Godwin’s own earlier estimation, Sincerity therefore, once introduced into the manners of mankind, would necessarily bring every other virtue in its train.³³ According to Kant himself, sincerity must be guarded and cultivated earlier than any other, for the opposite propensity is the hardest to extirpate if it is . . . allowed to take root" (R 6:190).

In effect, self-congruence (sincerity, authenticity, even earnestness) is a metavirtue—that is, a condition of possibility for morality, character, and moral action.³⁴ According to a nineteenth-century sermon, It is not enough to say of sincerity that it is an honorable character of man. It is rather that quality without which he can have nothing honorable.³⁵ By that logic, [s]incerity is not so much a distinct virtue of itself, as a general quality which gives a stamp, a value, and a very being to all the virtues.³⁶ As one theologian notes, sincerity seems not to be a distinct grace of itself, but to go through, and be an ingredient in every grace; which proves the genuineness of it.³⁷ Without sincerity, one’s virtues would be, as it were, merely virtual; they would be theatrically, even hypocritically feigned counterfeits. If insincere, my claim to love you—and, more controversially, also my generous act toward you—would be nothing more than self-interest in disguise. Thus, one’s sincerity is simply the measure of one’s moral reality.³⁸

SINCERITY’S OPPOSITE

Unlike sincerity or authenticity, the term hypocrisy predates modernity, appearing (among other places) in the influential moral thought of Aquinas (1225–74) and, before him, in the Greek New Testament. The Pharisees are, according to Jesus, hypocrites (Matthew 23:25), a characterization that equates them with the stage actors of the pagan world and also with the spiritual feigners con demned in the Septuagint (Job 36:13; Sirach 1:29). Despite its ancient roots, hypocrisy (the charge, at any rate) proliferates in modernity, becoming, in one Romantic writer’s words, the only vice that cannot be forgiven.³⁹

If sincerity is a metavirtue, then hypocrisy, than which nothing is more detestable to God, is a metavice.⁴⁰ According to Edmund Burke, Hypocrisy is, of all vices, the most hateful to man; because it combines the malice of guilt with the meanness of deception. Of all vices it is the most dangerous; because its whole machinery is constructed on treachery, through the means of confidence, on compounding virtue with vice, on making the noblest qualities of our nature minister to the most profligate purposes of our ruin.⁴¹ Hypocrisy is most hateful, because it perpetrates a double dishonor; the hypocrite harms us both by doing whatever his hypocrisy hides (e.g., his malicious cruelty) and also by deceiving us about his character. Worse, hypocrisy—perhaps, alone of the vices—attacks virtue itself, compounding or mixing the noblest qualities of our nature (i.e., confidence, trust, sociality) with the most profligate purposes of our ruin.⁴²

According to political theorist Hannah Arendt, hypocrisy is, for moderns, the worst possible vice: What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices, except this one. . . . Only the hypocrite is rotten to the core.⁴³ Most vices are, Arendt admits, compatible with a certain integrity (from the Latin for whole and, thus, another form of self-congruence). People who are openly cruel or greedy may be forthright about these vices. What’s more, they may go so far as to consider them no vices at all but virtues—albeit by different standards. In contrast, the hypocrite violates his own stated standards and, therefore, possesses neither (stable) standards (character integrity) nor sincerity (verbal integrity).

SINCERITY’S SUCCESSOR

With the advent of late modernity, hypocrisy finds itself in conflict with another ideal of self-congruence; ours is, in Charles Taylor’s words, "The Age of Authenticity."⁴⁴ Unlike sincerity’s supporters, authenticity’s advocates typically question the compatibility of self and society; according to existentialists (Jean-Paul Sartre), authenticity demands fidelity to my unique peculiarities, even (perhaps especially) when those idiosyncrasies put me at odds with others. Only by shedding my social roles or personae—the hypocritical masks I wear to conform—do I become my true, authentic self. In early modernity, by contrast, Shakespeare’s Polonius can instruct his son to be sincere precisely because doing so leads to right relations with others. Tellingly, Polonius’s mantra—This above all—to thine own self be true concludes with a (now too often forgotten) social sentiment—And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.⁴⁵

Unlike its sincere counterpart, the authentic self is, in a word, antisocial—asocial, at the very least. In effect, an implicit disagreement about the role of community in the constitution of the self is what often, and characteristically, distinguishes sincerity’s supporters from authenticity’s advocates.⁴⁶ What also distinguishes them is a related disagreement about the role of communication in our lives. The sincere self represents itself for others, outwardly seeming to be what it inwardly is. The authentic self, in contrast, simply resolves itself to be what it is, whether or not anyone else sees, knows, understands, or cares. To be authentic is simply to be oneself (not to others or for others); in Martin Heidegger’s influential account, authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) entails, as his German suggests, relating to oneself as one’s own (eigen).

Differences notwithstanding, sincerity and authenticity are comparable traits—cognate ideals, to echo Trilling’s expression.⁴⁷ Like sincerity, authenticity describes both estimable things (e.g., an authentic Picasso painting) and estimable persons. Like sincerity, authenticity also (purportedly) originates in modernity.⁴⁸ Most importantly, though, both are forms of self-congruence. More to the point, both are, as I come to argue, manifestations of modernity’s infatuation with self-congruence. As such, the terms are more or less interchangeable, in popular and academic circles alike. Charles Taylor, for one, rarely (if ever) distinguishes the sincere from the authentic. In saying ours is the Age of Authenticity, what Taylor means to highlight is modernity’s obsession with self-expression, an obsession arguably more characteristic of expressive sincerity than resolute authenticity. For Alessandro Ferrara, authenticity is, in essence, a type of sincerity; it is, in Ferrara’s own words, sincerity for its own sake.⁴⁹ As modern forms of self-congruence, sincerity and authenticity are inextricably intertwined; consequently, much of what these chapters—for that matter, much of what Kant, Kierkegaard, and Levinas—say about one applies to the other. Moreover, much of what is said for and against theatricality applies to both.⁵⁰

The Argument

This book aims, above all, to survey the theatrical fault line beneath the modern ethical self. A fundamental, perhaps inescapable, ambivalence underlies our thinking about the right role of sincerity, authenticity, and theatricality in our lives. To draw out that ambivalence—and to expose the limits of sincerity and authenticity as (supposed) moral virtues—I trace the ambivalence of three influential advocates of self-congruence: Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55), and Emmanuel Levinas (1906–95). The ambivalence of sincerity’s friends, rather than the hostility of its foes, offers the best evidence that sincerity has both virtues and vices.

More controversially, this book also aims to show that ethics requires virtuous hypocrisy—hypocrisy upward, in one writer’s words.⁵¹ Although modernity’s obsession with sincerity and authenticity—twin ideals that insist you say what you feel and be true to who you are⁵²—seems well-established, what remains all but ignored is the way that obsession threatens to bring ethics to an end. More to the point, what remains all but ignored is the way the ethical life requires incongruence—more dramatically put, theatrical pretense. In effect, the ethical theatricalities endorsed, if ambivalently, by the champions of self-congruence occasion a reappraisal of both the ethics of theatricality and the theatricality of ethics.⁵³

A close reading of the studied thinkers reveals no less than three problems with modernity’s obsession with self-congruence. Part I, on Kant’s Problem of Imperfection: The self may not be worthy of self-congruence. Advocates of sincerity, for one, typically presuppose— mistakenly, I hasten to add—that the inner self is necessarily worthy of externalization. Part II, on Kierkegaard’s Problem of Inexpressibility: The self may not be amenable to self-congruence. Advocates of sincerity also typically presuppose (again, mistakenly) that the self is the sort of thing that can be (adequately) represented or externalized. Part III, on Levinas’s Problem of Individualism: The self may become selfish in its quest for self-congruence. Emphasizing the importance of sincerity/authenticity—This above all—to thine own self be true—fosters a narcissism that ignores a fundamental obligation to be true to the other.

In response to the limits of self-congruence, each thinker also endorses a form of incongruence—specifically, certain ethical theatricalities. In part I, thinking alongside Kant, one realizes: Ethics requires imitation and simulation. Because the self may not be worthy of congruence, the would-be ethical agent must pretend to be someone else—even though doing so risks allegations of hypocrisy. In part II, thinking alongside Kierkegaard, one recognizes: Ethics requires irony and insincerity. Because the self eludes perfect congruence, the would-be ethical agent often says, perhaps should say, what she does not believe—at the very least, in order to expose how misleading appearances can be. In part III, thinking alongside Levinas, one sees: Ethics may require substitution or role reversal. Because we are (as responsible subjects) constituted by our relations with others, the would-be ethical agent must put herself—at a minimum, imaginatively—in the place of another.

To be clear, despite the theatricalities they recommend (implicitly or explicitly), Kant, Kierkegaard, and Levinas offer no careless, global endorsement of incongruence. The focus of this study is, after all, each thinker’s ambivalence toward theatricality; thus, each thinker retains a healthy skepticism toward some theatricality and most hypocrisy, whether in oneself or in another. Furthermore, despite their ambivalence, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Levinas also offer no shamelessly self-contradictory approach to the ethics of self-congruence. As I mean to show, a charitable reading of each thinker draws out a multifaceted, sometimes counterintuitive vision of the ethical life, one in which the demands of sincerity and theatricality are subtly coordinated, if not altogether harmonized. In effect, what each thinker offers, if unexpectedly, is a negotiated ambivalence that holds together both the responsible, loving persons we ought to be and the fragmented, imperfect creatures we are.

PART I

KANT

Sincerity and the Problem of Imperfection

Q: What is it about cocaine that makes it so wonderful?

A: Well, it intensifies your personality.

Q: Yes, but what if you’re an a**hole?

—BILL COSBY, Himself

WHAT COSBY’S JOKE REVEALS, if crassly, is that there is a problem with self-congruence.¹ As I come to argue, there are three main problems with making an unqualified virtue of the agreement between what I seem to be and what I actually am. The first, considered in this opening study of Immanuel Kant, is the Problem of Imperfection. Modernity’s esteem for self-congruence—especially, but not exclusively, between inner thought and outer expression—assumes that the inner self is worthy of congruence and the externalization of sincerity in particular. What we too often forget, however, is that the self may be strikingly imperfect, in need of moral conversion and improvement before sincere expression is suitable. It may be better to hold back what one actually thinks or feels. It may be better, as it were, to fake it—at least until we make it. Paradoxically, a high standard for moral behavior, especially when combined with a recognition of our fallen condition, gives good reason to find sincerity simultaneously both attractive and suspect. After all, we exhort people to be sincere once we know their insincerity provides the occasion for wrongdoing. Yet our exhortations to sincerity disregard ethics’ most basic premise: we need to be or become—at the very least, we need to act—other than we are.

Part I examines this problem in light of Immanuel Kant’s writings. Chapter 1 highlights Kant’s persistent and multifaceted endorsement of self-congruence (including sincerity) as well as his corresponding condemnation of incongruence (lying, imitation, etc.). Kant articulates what may be modernity’s strongest case for self-congruence. He does so, if unexpectedly, by highlighting its central place in the constitution of moral character. Yet as chapter 2 argues, Kant acknowledges, albeit ambivalently, that incongruence also plays a vital role in the cultivation of character. Surprisingly, Kant, too, recognizes that you just might have to fake it ’til you make it. Granted, for Kant, faking is never sufficient for a fully formed, genuinely moral character; in the end, we ought to be moral, not just seem so. Given our imperfections, however, faking it (or something remarkably like it) may aid the development of moral character. By that light, Kant’s practical thought occasions a reconsideration of both the ethics of insincerity and the insincerity of ethics.

1

THE TROUBLE WITH LYING

Kant, Character, and Self-Congruence

A human being who lies has no character at all.

—KANT, Lectures on Pedagogy

IMMANUEL KANT’S PREOCCUPATION with self-congruence reveals itself most famously—or infamously, depending on your point of view—in his absolute prohibition against lying. However, as this first chapter demonstrates, Kant mounts a passionate, repeated, and multidimensional endorsement of self-congruence that encompasses more than the conformity between what I think and what I say. Reading through Kant’s practical philosophy—from the early ethics lectures (1762) through The Metaphysics of Morals (1797) and beyond—one finds Kant’s repeated affirmation of (1) truthfulness, (2) sincerity, (3) autonomy, and (4) character.¹ To clarify Kant’s views, the following discussion focuses on these specific forms of self-congruence: what Kant says about them and what he finds so valuable in them. It also outlines his complaints against forms of incongruence: (1) lying, (2) hypocrisy, (3) imitation, and (4) habit.

The following discussion also considers Kant’s views about four modes of self-congruence: (1) verbal (agreement between what I think and what I say); (2) volitional (agreement between what I rationally will and what I do); (3) temporal (agreement between who I was and who I am); and (4) anthropological (agreement between who I am as an individual and who I ought to be as a human). By my reading, each mode, like each form, of self-congruence plays a crucial part in what Kant arguably cares about most, moral character. On the contrary, incongruence ought to be shunned insofar as it undermines that character. For Kant, self-congruent is not only the right way to be; it is the properly human way to be.

Kant on Lying and Truthfulness

"The greatest violation of a human being’s duty to himself regarded merely as a moral being . . . is the contrary of truthfulness [Wahrhaftigkeit], lying [Lüge]" (MM 6:429).² With that announcement, Kant voices what may be modernity’s most influential—and most hostile—attack on incongruence. To the long-standing bewilderment of critics and supporters alike, Kant condemns all lies. In his Lectures on Pedagogy (published in 1803, the year before his death), Kant wonders "whether a white lie [Notlüge] should be permitted" (P 9:490). No! he concludes, since there is not one conceivable case in which it would be excusable, and least of all before children (P 9:490).

So objectionable is even the smallest lie that verbal dishonesty regularly takes its place in Kant’s thought as the worst of all faults, if not the root of all other faults. It is, he says, "noteworthy that the Bible dates the first crime, through which evil entered the world, not from fratricide (Cain’s) but from the first lie" (MM 6:431). In saying so, Kant anticipates a modern moral tendency to rank dishonesty or hypocrisy higher than cruelty or hostility in a catalog of vices.³ In words taken from Kant’s On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy (1791), while hostility or the lack of love may have a purpose whose function is yet permissible and good in certain farther connections, there is never an acceptable, moral use for the lie, which is good in no respect (MT 8:270). And, as most undergraduate philosophy students learn, On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy (1797) condemns all lies, even (as the title suggests) well-meaning fibs, including the one we might tell to a murderer who asked us whether a friend of ours whom he is pursuing has taken refuge in our house (RL 8:425).

Despite Kant’s unmistakable animosity toward lying, what remains less obvious is: (1) the prohibition’s specific target or scope and (2) its precise moral justification. To the first point, because Kant’s lie refers to a narrower set of acts than one might expect, Kant forbids much less than what many readers suppose; he prohibits neither all forms of deception nor, to anticipate the next chapter, all forms of incongruence. To the second point, while the liar surely does some thing wrong by mistreating others, Kant complains, above all, that lying occasions the liar’s mistreatment of herself. By violating self-congruence, the liar not only does something immoral; she becomes something immoral.⁴

WHAT IS (NOT) A LIE?

Lying is, in one critic’s summation of Kant’s view, making an untruthful statement with the intention that that statement be believed to be true.⁵ Because " ‘lie’ (Lüge, mendacium) is a technical term for Kant,⁶ readers should be careful to distinguish ordinary understandings of it from Kant’s own understanding. Likewise, readers should learn to distinguish Kant’s lie," which is always prohibited, from other, sometimes permissible forms of untruth or deception. For one, there is, according to James Mahon, a crucial difference in Kant’s thought between an untrue and an "untruthful declaration.⁷ Unlike a merely untrue (mistakenly inaccurate) declaration, an untruthful declaration (a lie) involves intentional deception; in words taken from Kant’s 1785 ethics lectures, the untrue declaration lacks signs indicative of thoughts that [one] does not have" (LE 27:700). Ours is, therefore, a duty of truthfulness, not truth.⁸ In Kant’s words, "One cannot always stand by the truth [wahr] of what one says to oneself or another (for one can be mistaken); however, one can and must stand by the truthfulness [wahrhaft] of one’s declaration or confession, because one has immediate consciousness of this" (MT 8:267). Because ought implies can (R 6:50), we (being the epistemically fallible human creatures we are) have a duty to say what we believe to be true, not what actually is true. In other words, we have a duty to be sincere, not correct.

We also have a relatively narrow duty to avoid untruthful declarations, rather than all untruthful statements.⁹ The playactor’s claim to be Prince Hamlet, for instance, is no lie, in Kant’s view, although the statement is both (a) untrue and (b) believed to be untrue by the speaker. The untruthful statement lacks the decisive intention to deceive.¹⁰ After all, the actor’s name and role appear clearly in the playbill. Therefore, the actor’s untruthful statement is something other than a lie. Furthermore, because the statement is uttered within a context that lacks the social or conventional warrant for truthfulness (i.e., from the playhouse stage), no reasonable person will be or should be misled by it.

A final useful distinction differentiates lies of commission (always prohibited) from lies of omission (sometimes permissible). Because it is not "the making an untruthful [declaration]" of any sort, the so-called lie of omission—a nondeclarative, typically nonverbal deception—is, properly speaking, no lie at all.¹¹ In Kant’s estimation, deceiving someone is not necessarily forbidden—certainly not by a prohibition against lying. While these distinctions are crucial to an understanding of Kant’s view, equally crucial is Kant’s answer to a related question: What exactly is wrong with the lie?

WHAT IS SO BAD ABOUT LYING?

Kant’s attack on liars extends from his earliest works in practical philosophy to his last. Sometimes Kant insinuates that lying is self-evidently wrong—immediately abhorrent (LE 27:59)—although he apparently contradicts that point elsewhere, for example when insisting on the need to teach young people to avoid it (MM 6:481).¹² Other times, Kant