Honesty

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Diogenes Searching for an Honest Man, attributed to J. H. W. Tischbein (c. 1780) Diogenes looking for a man - attributed to JHW Tischbein.jpg
Diogenes Searching for an Honest Man, attributed to J. H. W. Tischbein (c.1780)

Honesty or truthfulness is a facet of moral character that connotes positive and virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, straightforwardness (including straightforwardness of conduct: earnestness), along with the absence of lying, cheating, theft, etc. Honesty also involves being trustworthy, loyal, fair, and sincere.

Contents

A reputation for honesty is denoted by terms like reputability and trustworthiness. Honesty about one's future conduct, loyalties, or commitments is called accountability, reliability, dependability, or conscientiousness.

Someone who goes out of their way to tell possibly unwelcome truths extends honesty into the region of candor or frankness. The Cynics engaged in a challenging sort of frankness like this called parrhêsia.

Opinions

A sign in Taytay Church, Philippines, encouraging churchgoers to practice honesty TaytayChurchjf4190 03.JPG
A sign in Taytay Church, Philippines, encouraging churchgoers to practice honesty

Honesty is valued in many ethnic and religious cultures. [1] "Honesty is the best policy" is a proverb of Edwin Sandys, while the quote "Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom" is attributed to Thomas Jefferson, as used in a letter to Nathaniel Macon. [2] April 30 is national Honesty Day in the United States.

William Shakespeare described honesty as an attribute people leave behind when he wrote that "no legacy is so rich as honesty" in act 3, scene 5 of "All's Well that Ends Well." [3]

Tolstoy thought that honesty was revolutionary: “No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity.... it is only needful that each individual should say what he really feels or thinks, or at least that he should not say what he does not think.” [4] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ("Live Not By Lies," 1974) and Václav Havel ( The Power of the Powerless , 1978) agreed. Havel wrote:

[L]iving within the truth has more than a mere existential dimension (returning humanity to its inherent nature), or a noetic dimension (revealing reality as it is), or a moral dimension (setting an example for others). It also has an unambiguous political dimension. If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth.

The 18th century enlightenment philosopher William Wollaston argued that all religion ultimately reduces to ethics and all ethics reduces to honesty ( The Religion of Nature Delineated , 1722). “[E]very intelligent, active, and free being should so behave himself, as by no act to contradict truth; ...treat every thing as being what it is.” All else would follow from that.

Immanuel Kant made the duty of honesty a core example of his ethical theories.

Others noted, however, that "too much honesty might be seen as undisciplined openness". [5] For example, individuals may be perceived as being "too honest" if they honestly express the negative opinions of others, either without having been asked their opinion, or having been asked in a circumstance where the response would be trivial. This concern manifests in political correctness, with individuals refraining from expressing their true opinions due to a general societal condemnation of such views. Research also found that honesty can lead to interpersonal harm because people avoid information about how their honest behavior affects others. [6]

Definitions

Merriam-Webster defines honesty as "fairness and straightforwardness of conduct" or "adherence to the facts". [7]

The Oxford English Dictionary defines honesty as "the quality of being honest." [8] Honest is, in turn, defined as "Free of deceit; truthful and sincere...Morally correct or virtuous...(attributive) Fairly earned, especially through hard work...(of an action) done with good intentions even if unsuccessful or misguided...(attributive) Simple, unpretentious, and unsophisticated. [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

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Courage is the choice and willingness to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. Valor is courage or bravery, especially in battle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtue</span> Positive trait or quality deemed to be morally good

A virtue is a trait of excellence, including traits that may be moral, social, or intellectual. The cultivation and refinement of virtue is held to be the "good of humanity" and thus is valued as an end purpose of life or a foundational principle of being. In human practical ethics, a virtue is a disposition to choose actions that succeed in showing high moral standards: doing what is said to be right and avoiding what is wrong in a given field of endeavour, even when doing so may be unnecessary from a utilitarian perspective. When someone takes pleasure in doing what is right, even when it is difficult or initially unpleasant, they can establish virtue as a habit. Such a person is said to be virtuous through having cultivated such a disposition. The opposite of virtue is vice, and the vicious person takes pleasure in habitual wrong-doing to their detriment.

Moral realism is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world, some of which may be true to the extent that they report those features accurately. This makes moral realism a non-nihilist form of ethical cognitivism with an ontological orientation, standing in opposition to all forms of moral anti-realism and moral skepticism, including ethical subjectivism, error theory, and non-cognitivism. Moral realism's two main subdivisions are ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism.

Integrity is the quality of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or earnestness of one's actions. Integrity can stand in opposition to hypocrisy. It regards internal consistency as a virtue, and suggests that people who hold apparently conflicting values should account for the discrepancy or alter those values.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtue ethics</span> Normative ethical theories

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Authenticity (philosophy)</span> Concept in existential psychology and philosophy

Authenticity is a concept of personality in the fields of psychology, existential psychotherapy, existentialist philosophy, and aesthetics. In existentialism, authenticity is the degree to which a person's actions are congruent with their values and desires, despite external pressures to social conformity. The conscious self comes to terms with the condition of Geworfenheit, of having been thrown into an absurd world not of their own making, thereby encountering external forces and influences different from and other than the Self. A person’s lack of authenticity is considered bad faith in dealing with other people and with one's self; thus, authenticity is in the instruction of the Oracle of Delphi: “Know thyself.” Concerning authenticity in art, the philosophers Jean Paul Sartre and Theodor Adorno held opposing views and opinions about jazz, a genre of American music; Sartre said that jazz is authentic and Adorno said that jazz is inauthentic. Many musical subcultures require artistic authenticity, lest the community consider an artist to be a poseur for lacking authenticity ; artistic authenticity is integral to many genres of music, including but not limited to genres of rock, club music, and hip-hop.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Temperance (virtue)</span> Cardinal virtue of control over excess

Temperance in its modern use is defined as moderation or voluntary self-restraint. It is typically described in terms of what a person voluntarily refrains from doing. This includes restraint from revenge by practicing mercy and forgiveness, restraint from arrogance by practicing humility and modesty, restraint from excesses such as extravagant luxury or splurging, restraint from overindulgence in food and drink, and restraint from rage or craving by practicing calmness and equanimity. The distinction between temperance and self-control is subtle. A person who exhibits self-control wisely refrains from giving in to unwise desires. A person who exhibits temperance does not have unwise desires in the first place because they have wisely shaped their character in such a way that their desires are proper ones. Aristotle suggested this analogy: An intemperate person is like a city with bad laws; a person who lacks self control is like a city that has good laws on the books but doesn’t enforce them.

In Ancient Greek philosophy, Phronesis is a type of wisdom or intelligence concerned with practical action. It implies both good judgment and excellence of character and habits. Classical works about this topic are still influential today. In Aristotelian ethics, the concept was distinguished from other words for wisdom and intellectual virtues—such as episteme and sophia—because of its practical character. The traditional Latin translation is prudentia, which is the source of the English word "prudence".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtue epistemology</span> Philosophical approach

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sincerity</span> The virtue of honest and genuine communication

Sincerity is the virtue of one who communicates and acts in accordance with the entirety of their feelings, beliefs, thoughts, and desires in a manner that is honest and genuine. Sincerity in one's actions may be called "earnestness".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bad faith</span> Duplicity, fraud, or deception

Bad faith is a sustained form of deception which consists of entertaining or pretending to entertain one set of feelings while acting as if influenced by another. It is associated with hypocrisy, breach of contract, affectation, and lip service. It may involve intentional deceit of others, or self-deception.

Secular ethics is a branch of moral philosophy in which ethics is based solely on human faculties such as logic, empathy, reason or moral intuition, and not derived from belief in supernatural revelation or guidance—a source of ethics in many religions. Secular ethics refers to any ethical system that does not draw on the supernatural, and includes humanism, secularism and freethinking. A classical example of literature on secular ethics is the Kural text, authored by the ancient Indian philosopher Valluvar.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the human self:

<i>The Happiness Hypothesis</i> 2006 book by Jonathan Haidt

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Ārjava literally means sincerity, straightness, and non-hypocrisy. It is one of the ten yamas in ancient Hindu and Jaina texts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Values (Western philosophy)</span>

The values that a person holds may be personal or political depending on whether they are considered in relation to the individual or to society. Apart from moral virtue, examples of personal values include friendship, knowledge, beauty etc. and examples of political values, justice, equality and liberty. This article will outline some current ideas relating to the first group – personal values. It will begin by looking at the kinds of thing that have value and finish with a look at some of the theories that attempt to describe what value is. Reference will be made solely to Western sources although it is recognised that many, if not all, of the values discussed may be universal.

References

    • Rogers, Carl R. (1964). "Toward a modern approach to values: The valuing process in the mature person". The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. 68 (2): 160–67.
    • Dahlsgaard, Katherine; Peterson, Christopher; Seligman, Martin E.P. (2005). "Shared Virtue: The Convergence of Valued Human Strengths Across Culture and History". Review of General Psychology. 9 (3): 203–13.
    • Hilbig, Benjamin E.; Zettler, Ingo (2009). "Pillars of cooperation: Honesty–Humility, social value orientations, and economic behavior". Journal of Research in Personality. 43 (3): 516–19.
    • Van Lange, Paul A.M.; Kuhlman, D. Michael (1994). "Social value orientations and impressions of partner's honesty and intelligence: A test of the might versus morality effect". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 67 (1): 126–41.
    • Schluter, Dolph; Price, Trevor (1993). "Honesty, Perception and Population Divergence in Sexually Selected Traits". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 253 (1336): 117–22.
  1. "Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon". The Thomas Jefferson Papers Series 1. General Correspondence. 1651–1827. January 12, 1819. Archived from the original on October 6, 2017. Retrieved July 9, 2013.
  2. William Shakespeare. All's Well That Ends Well Archived 2019-06-12 at the Wayback Machine MIT Shakespeare.
  3. Tolstoy, Lev (1894), On Patriotism
  4. MacKinnon, Barbara; Fiala, Andrew (2015). Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues (Concise ed.). p. 93.[ ISBN missing ]
  5. Levine, E.; Munguia Gomez, D. (2021). "'I'm just being honest.' When and why honesty enables help versus harm". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 120 (1): 33–56. doi:10.1037/pspi0000242. PMID   32463271. S2CID   218977238. Archived from the original on 2021-04-13. Retrieved 2021-02-05 via APA PsycNet.
  6. "Honesty". Merriam-Webster. 2017. Archived from the original on 2017-10-06.
  7. "Honesty". Oxford English Dictionary. 2017. Archived from the original on 2017-10-06.
  8. "Honest". Oxford English Dictionary. 2017. Archived from the original on 2016-09-28.