In his 1797 essay “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Love of Humanity”, Immanuel Kant argues that, when only a confident lie might save a friend, one must, if asked, reply truthfully and thus betray his hiding place to the person who wants to kill him. This is the first monograph that explores Kant’s essay in detail. Jens Timmermann examines the historical background of the piece (Kant was provoked by Benjamin Constant and his translator, Carl Friedrich Cramer), the history of the example (which is also discussed by, amongst others, Augustine, Johann David Michaelis and Johann Gottlieb Fichte), the peculiarities of Constant’s version of the case and Kant’s core argument against Constant: that lying, or a right to lie, would undermine contractual rights and spell disaster for human society.

This chapter focuses on certain features of Kant’s moral theory that interpreters have used to soften the absolutism of the 1797 essay on lying: the notion of moral conflict (H. J. Paton, Barbara Herman), the difference between right and ethics (John Atwell), the so-called right of necessity in emergency situations (Hans Wagner), ideal and non-ideal moral theory (Christine Korsgaard) and the thesis that lying should be permissible when the use of violence is (David Sussman). It turns out that none of these approaches can be made to work.

Ordinary language users do in fact use RIGHT and WRONG in ways that permit of degrees, as pointed out in Chapter 1, but advocates of the binary theory may question the philosophical relevance of this. Meaning tracks use, but it is not certain that the current meanings (and uses) of RIGHT and WRONG are optimal. Gradualists need to show that the gradable notions of RIGHT and WRONG used by laypeople are better than their binary rivals and ought to be adopted by moral philosophers. The focus of this chapter is on what I call the argument from conflicting reasons. This argument seeks to show that gradable notions of RIGHT and WRONG enable moral theorists to articulate nuanced verdicts about moral conflicts, which cannot be expressed in binary theories. The gist of the argument is as follows: Some moral conflicts are irresolvable, and in those cases the deontic properties of acts favored and disfavored by conflicting reasons cannot be accurately captured by binary deontic verdicts.

Education professionals regularly confront challenging ethical questions in the course of their work. Recently, education scholars and practitioners have embraced normative case studies – realistic accounts of the complex ethical dilemmas of educational practice and policy – as a key tool both for theorizing the ethical dimension of education work and for supporting the development of education professionals as moral agents. This chapter zooms in on the second, pedagogical aim of the normative case study and makes the case that this approach to professional education is best understood as a form of democratic education. Through careful facilitation and a structured discussion protocol, the normative case study approach: (i) allows participants to discuss ethical dilemmas that arise in their work in relations of democratic equality, fostering their development of moral sensitivity and moral agency; and (ii) supports participants in learning to sustain dialogue across reasonable disagreement.