Truth and truthfullness

Many lawyers instruct their clients to only tell the truth but leave out anything that might incriminate them. This exposes the difference between a truly moral way of thinking and a kind of legalistic surrogate. Legalistic thinking asks only “what I am permitted to do” whereas truly moral thinking asks “what would be the right thing to do”. We now think more of our entitlements, rights and strict legal obligations and less of what is required to be a good person.

Philosopher Bernard Williams argued in Truth and Truthfullness that there are two positive virtues of truth, and each is somewhat complex. The first of these he calls accuracy, the second is sincerity. People who claim we should never lie not only neglect the second, they also have an impoverished understanding of the first. To say that the truth requires accuracy does not mean simply that everything you say must be 100 per cent correct, but that it must include all the relevant truths. So, for instance, the estate agent may technically be accurate when she describes a property as 307 meters from the local shop, but it would be even more accurate, in illiams’s sense to point out that the direct route is blocked and so it’s about half an hour’s walk away.