More on the Noble Lie

I think it is important to start this discussion on the conflict that I often have between understanding the difference between morals and ethics. As far as I can understand, morality is an understanding of right and wrong. And ethics involves the application of that understanding of right and wrong. This discussion is primary concerned with ethics in communication. To elaborate on this definition and to focus it more, I turn to the teaching of Plato.

Plato, in his Republic, proposed the “noble lie,” as a means to maintain social harmony by certain aristocratic elites among the lessor classes. He felt this as long as the misguided truths, or pure untruths, benefited the greater good of the people. This he described in Book III;

Then if any one at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good.

(Plato, Book II, n.d)

Interestingly, he seemed to feel that untruths were recuperative to the lower classes such as medicines were, and goes on further to illustrate that only the elite have a right to lie while the common man is without that right.

a lie is useless to the gods, and useful only as a medicine to men, then the use of such medicines should be restricted to physicians; private individuals have no business with them.

(Plato, Book III, n.d)

Paula Tomkins, in Practicing Communication Ethics, states that Plato “charged early teachers of communication with teaching techniques of flattery and deception….instead of truth” – something that “shadows the field of communication studies today” (Tomkins, 2016).

I believe that the mentality of Plato’s noble lie is something that will work for a while, but over time its power will be fleeting, and once the lie effects the credibility of the speaker, whether that spokesperson be of an elite class or not, will lose whatever right or claim to deceive they once had. Tomkins states that as message receivers, once we begin to “consider most communication deceptive or trivial,” we are able and likely to “ignore what people communicate and stop listening” (Tomkins, 2016).

When will Donald Trump’s untruths reach that point? When will these untruths become unethical? When will we stop listening and begin to ignore the honored position of the Presidential office? I don’t know, but that will indeed be a sad day for America.

References

Plato (n.d) .Book III. Republic . 460 B.C.E. retrieved from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.4.iii.html

Tomkins, P. (2016) . Practicing Communication Ethics . Routledge . New York .2016