Ethics and Values / Unit 5 Ethics 221 short lesson, about 20 seconds
The Inquiring Murderer
Captions available
The idea
Kant's hardest case: a murderer at the door asks where your friend hides — and Kant holds that even here the ban on lying stands.
In practice
Kant answered the challenge in print: no right to lie from philanthropy, he argued — an answer most readers, then and now, refuse.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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