Lügen

ABSTRACTS Maria-Sibylla Lotter: »On the Mischief of Lying« Lying in the sense of declaring as true what you believe to be false takes a special position within ethical discourse concerning truthfulness and the virtues and vices of communication. None of the many other ways in which people lack truthfulness is considered nearly as vicious as lying. However, in everyday life our attitude towards lying is far from consistent insofar as we tend to take both an absolutist and a relativist position towards lying. The article shows that our inconsistency derives from several philosophical traditions which have developed widely different concepts and moral attitudes with regard to lying. And with respect to the challenges of present life it is argued that instead of bending all our thoughts on lying, we should rather follow Michel Foucault and Bernard Williams in distinguishing the virtues of veracity we should cultivate in the different areas of modern life.
Jörg Meibauer: »Are Concepts of Lying Culture-Dependent?« We can distinguish a minimalist and a maximalist concept of lying. Whilst the former assumes that lying is the same communicative act for all human beings but can be used in a different way according to social and cultural contexts, the latter holds that there are as many different concepts of lying as there are different social and cultural configurations in which lies are used. In particular, some researchers claim that Asian (collectivist) cultures possess different concepts of lying than Western (individualist) cultures. When carefully looking at pertinent studies, it appears that the concept of lying as constituting a violation of the first submaxim of Quality according to Grice is a good candidate for a minimalist (universal) concept of lying.
Richard Raatzsch: »Untruthfulness, Ideology, and Philanthropy« According to Raymond Geuss, the focus on politician untruthfulness distracts our attention from the political questions that really matter.