The Truth about Lying Read online

  Pascal, the French philosopher, had said that the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. We don’t know what battles are waged in the heart of men and women, what refrains and rages, what resentments and reactions, what regrets and reticence, what remorse and what rebukes. Nobody knows what lies within – no philosopher and no theologian, no psychoanalyst and no anthropologist. We are mysteries to ourselves and don’t know why we do what we do most of the time. This is as it should be. Perhaps at the end things may be explained to us and not just interpreted by us.

  In the dark heart of men and women there lies also grace and glimmers of something more shining through, something holy, something numinous and luminous that enkindles a light in our midst; it may lead the way; it could be called ‘conscience’. We may lie a lot but we mortals are moral too; we are creatures of clay and dust and so we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves for our little lies and yet we should also strive for more, so much more and certainly try to avoid the big Lie.

  Evil may be alluring but the Good is magnetic; it draws us still. Evil is radical and all around us (‘see how the wicked prosper’) but the Good is originary (‘God saw that it was good’). It attracts us through love rather than lies. Love is the real lie of the land. Love and Reason are the twin pillars of reality, as the endless battle between God (Truth as a Person) and Satan (the Father of Lies) is being played out in the drama that is life. Socrates said that the worst thing a man can do is to lie in his soul about the Good. This just about sums it all up. For me, at any rate.

  Select Bibliography

  Augustine, St. ‘De Mendacio (Lying) and Contra Mendacio (Against Lying)’ in R. J. Deferrari, ed., Treatises on Various Subjects. Catholic University of America Press: New York, 1952.

  Bacon, Francis. ‘Of Truth’, Essays. Wordsworth Classics of World Literature: Hertfordshire, 1997.

  Barnes, Julian. A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1996.

  Campbell, Jeremy. The Liar’s Tale. W.W. Norton and Company: New York and London, 2001.

  Forrester, John. Truth Games: Lies, Money, and Psychoanalysis. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 1997.

  Frankl, Viktor. The Doctor and the Soul. Souvenir Press: London, 2009 (1969).

  Freud, Sigmund. ‘Two Lies Told by Children’. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 1913, vol. 12.

  Freud, Sigmund. ‘The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman’. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 1920, vol. 18.

  Freud, Sigmund. ‘The Future of an Illusion’. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 1927, vol. 21.

  Freud, Sigmund. ‘Jokes and Their Relation to an Unconscious’. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 1905, vol. 8.

  Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1975.

  Kant, Immanuel. ‘On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives’ (1797), Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy. Ed., Lewis White Beck. Chicago University Press: Chicago, 1949.

  Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Penguin Books: London, 1977.

  Montaigne, Michel de. ‘On Giving the Lie’, The Complete Essays. Penguin Books: London, 1991.

  Nietzsche, Friedrich. ‘Knowledge: Theoretical Introduction on Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense and On Truth and Lies’, in Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870’s. Ed., Daniel Breazeale. Humanities: New York, 1979.

  Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. (1943). Philosophical Library: New York, 1956.

  Sartre, Jean-Paul. A Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions. Routledge: London and New York, 1994.

  Wilde, Oscar. ‘The Decay of Lying’, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Hamlyn: London-New York-Sydney-Toronto, 1986 (1963).

  Wilde, Oscar. ‘The Truth of Masks’, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Hamlyn: London-New York-Sydney-Toronto, 1986 (1963).

  Wilde, Oscar. ‘De Profundis’, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Hamlyn: London-New York-Sydney-Toronto, 1986 (1963).

  Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Culture and Value. Blackwell Publishing: London, 2002 (1977).

  Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Blackwell: London, 1978.

  Žižek, Slavoj. The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity. The MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 2003.

  Žižek, Slavoj. The Fragile Absolute. Verso: London and New York, 2000.

  Index

  18 Reasons Why Mothers Hate Their Babies, 1

  1984, 1

  Achilles, 1

  Adler, Alfred, 1

  Adorno, Theodor, 1

  Adventures of Pinocchio, The, 1

  Allen Woody, 1, 2

  All’s Well that Ends Well, 1

  Annie Hall, 1

  Antichrist, The, 1

  Aquinas, St. Thomas, 1,2, 3

  Aristotle, 1, 2, 3

  Athene, 1

  Autism, 1

  Barnes, Julian, 1

  Bede, Adam, 1

  Being and Nothingness, 1

  Bergman, Ingmar, 1

  Bible, 1, 2, 3

  Brilliant, Ashley, 1

  Bulgakov, Mikhail, 1

  Butler, Samuel, 1

  Catcher in the Rye, The, 1

  City of God, 1

  Collodi, Carlo, 1

  Confucius, 1

  Contra Mendacio, 1

  Culture and Value, 1

  Darwin, Charles, 1

  de la Barca, Pedro Calderón, 1

  De Mendacio, 1

  de Montaigne, Michel, 1, 2, 3

  De Profundis, 1

  de Staël, Madame, 1

  ‘Decay of Lying, The’, 1

  Demosthenes, 1

  Derrida, Jacques, 1

  Descartes, René, 1

  Dickinson, Emily, 1

  Disraeli, Benjamin, 1

  Doctor and the Soul, The, 1

  Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1

  Douglas, Lord Alfred, 1

  Eliot, George, 1

  Eliot, T.S., 1

  Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1

  Eminem, 1

  Epimenides, 1

  Essays, 1

  Ethics, 1

  Eubulides, 1

  Euthydemus, 1

  Falret, Jules, 1

  False Memory Syndrome, 1

  Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, The, 1

  Frankl, Victor, 1

  Freud, Sigmund, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

  gelotophobia, 1

  Gödel, Kurt, 1

  Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1

  Gracian, Balthasar, 1

  Greene, Graham, 1

  Haig, Alexander, 1

  Heraclitus, 1, 2

  Hermes, 1

  History of the World in 10½ Chapters, A, 1

  Hitler, Adolph, 1

  Holocaust, 1

  Homer, 1

  homosexuality, 1

  Human, All Too Human, 1

  Hume, David, 1, 2, 3

  James, Henry, 1

  Jefferson, Thomas, 1

  Jesus Christ, 1, 2, 3

  Kant, Immanuel, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  King Lear, 1

  Koko, 1

  Kristofferson, Kris, 1

  Kundera, Milan, 1

  Labyrinth, 1

  Lacan, Jacques, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Laughable Loves, 1

  ‘Liar, The’, 1

  Liar Liar, 1

  Liar’s Paradox, 1

  Lie to Me, 1

  Lolita, 1

  Luther, Martin, 1

  Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1

  Magic Lantern, The, 1

  Magritte, René, 1

  Marx Groucho, 1, 2

  Master and Margarita, The, 1


  Maugham, W. Somerset, 1

  Maxims and Reflections, 1

  Midler, Bette, 1

  Mitty, Walter, 1

  Mohammed, 1

  More, St. Thomas, 1

  Murdoch, Iris, 1

  mythomania, 1

  Nabokov, Vladimir, 1

  ‘Negation’, 1

  Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), 1

  Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

  Odysseus, 1, 2

  ‘On Giving the Lie’, 1

  ‘On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives’, 1

  ‘On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense, 1

  Orwell, George, 1

  Othello, 1

  Painted Veil, The, 1

  Parker, Dorothy, 1

  Parkinson’s disease, 1

  Pascal, Blaise, 1

  Picasso, Pablo, 1

  Pilate, Pontius, 1

  Pindar, 1

  ‘Pinocchio Effect’, 1

  ‘Pinocchio Paradox’, 1

  ‘Pinocchio Syndrome’, 1

  Plato, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  Popper, Karl, 1

  ‘Portrait of Mr. W.H., The’, 1

  Protagoras, 1

  Proust, Marcel, 1

  Psychopathology of Everyday Life, The, 1

  pseudologia fantastica, 1

  Quintilian, 1

  Radical Honesty Movement, 1

  Remembrance of Things Past, 1

  Republic, 1, 2, 3

  Reveries, 1

  Rock, Chris, 1

  Rorty, Richard, 1

  Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1

  Rowland, Helen, 1

  Salinger, J.D., 1

  Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1

  ‘Science of Honesty, 1

  Scruton, Roger, 1

  Sex, Lies and Videotape, 1

  Shakespeare, William, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Shaw, George Bernard, 1

  Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, 1

  Socrates, 1, 2

  Soderbergh, Steven, 1

  Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 1

  Sophist, The, 1

  sophistry, 1, 2

  Sophists, 1

  Sophocles, 1

  Spinoza, Baruch, 1

  St. Augustine, 1, 2

  Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1

  Sydney, Algernon, 1

  Tarski, Alfred, 1

  Thatcher, Margaret, 1

  ‘Truth of Masks, The’, 1

  Tudal, Antoine, 1

  Twain, Mark, 1, 2

  ‘Two Lies Told by Children’, 1

  Voltaire, 1

  Wilde, Oscar, 1, 2, 3

  Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1, 2

  Wizards Project, 1

  Xenophon, 1

  Žižek, Slavoj, 1

  Zohar, The, 1

  Zweig, Arnold, 1

  About the Author

  Stephen J. Costello, Ph.D., is a philosopher and Director of the Viktor Frankl Institute of Ireland: School of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. He was born in Dublin and educated in St. Gerard’s School, Castleknock College, University College Dublin and did a small stint at the King’s Inns. He holds a Master’s and doctorate degree in philosophy from the National University of Ireland and a Diploma in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis from Vienna. Dr Costello is the author of The Irish Soul: In Dialogue, The Pale Criminal: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 18 Reasons Why Mothers Hate Their Babies: A Philosophy of Childhood, Hermeneutics and the Psychoanalysis of Religion, What are Friends For?: Insights from the Great Philosophers, The Ethics of Happiness: An Existential Analysis, and Philosophy and the Flow of Presence: Desire, Drama and the Divine Ground of Being. Dr Costello is a member of the Irish Philosophical Society, the Royal Institute of Philosophy and the International Association of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. He is a black belt in Aikido and the equivalent in Wing Tsun Kung Fu.

  Copyright

  First published in 2013

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  This ebook edition first published in 2013

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  The right of Stephen Costello to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

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  ISBN 978–1–908308–53–5