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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2025
The story of Kant’s essay “On a Supposed Right to Lie” is shrouded in mystery. Benjamin Constant’s essay “On Political Reactions” saddles an anonymous “German philosopher” with the view that lying is always wrong, even when a lie might be needed to save a friend’s life; and to date, Kant had not defended that view in print. Kant’s name was is mentioned only by Carl Friedrich Cramer in his German translation of Constant’s essay. So why did Cramer target Kant? And why did Kant play along, admitting he had defended absolutism in print when he had not? To complicate things further, Cramer mentions another German moralist, Johann David Michaelis, who endorses a view that is very similar to Kant’s, which is also examined in this chapter.
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