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Catholics condemn Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) as a fanatic; he fails to cushion ‘Never lie' with a distinction between venial and mortal sin. But Kant has secular substitutes: lie/mislead, candor/honesty, commission/omission, deception/illusion, discursive/pictorial. Kant weaves these distinctions into a safety net for polite society, business, politics, and religion. Kant's break-away disciple, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) removes this safety net. Any intentional propagation of error suffices for lying. Ditto for refraining to correct a remedial error. Why? Because we all have a duty to perfect each other. This moral development requires rational informed choice. Being misinformed subverts freedom. The medium of misinformation is irrelevant: utterances, silences, pictures, music, dance, private thoughts, telepathy. To Fichte's relief, Kant overcame the temptation to save an innocent man from murder by lying. But Fichte still thought Kant manifested a corrupt mind by merely considering lying! [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bumped from a flight? Relax with this defense of the big business practice of deliberately promising more services than one will provide. On a small scale, over‐promising yields a toxic moral dilemma and a lie. At a large scale, the dilemma becomes dilute, and the lie completely disappears. Overbooking is honest because there is a sufficiently high probability of fulfilling each promise. Overbooking is socially beneficial because the promised resources are used more efficiently. There are fewer wasted seats on jumbo jets and hence cheaper tickets with less pollution. Widespread disapproval of overbooking is a fallacious scaling error. Instead of there being too much overbooking, there is too little. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immanuel Kant promised, 'as Your Majesty's loyal subject', to abstain from all public lectures about religion. All past commentators agree this phrase permitted Kant to return to the topic after the King died. But it is not part of the 'at‐issue content'. Consequently, 'as Your Majesty's loyal subject' is no more an escape clause than the corresponding phrase in 'I guarantee, as your devoted fan, that these guitar strings will not break'. Just as the guarantee stands regardless of whether the guarantor ceases to be your devoted fan, the compliance conditions of Kant's promise are not affected by Kant's ceasing to be the king's loyal subject. For good or ill, Kant made a lying promise to King Friedrich Wilhelm II in 1794. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]