SHOULD WE SUSPEND THE TRUTH TO PREVENT HARM?

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dc.coverageSTUDIA UBB PHILOSOPHIA, Volume 67 (LXVII), No. 2, August 2022, pp. 187-201, DOI: 10.24193/subbphil.2022.2.10en-US
dc.creatorOLANIPEKUN, Olusola Victor
dc.date2022-08-12
dc.date.accessioned2026-02-21T10:39:00Z
dc.descriptionThe paper examines the ethics of truth telling and free speech in Jonathan Rauch’s "The Humanitarian Threat". The central question is this: “Should we suspend the truth to prevent harm?”. Both humanitarians and the anti-humanitarians supply different responses to this question. While the humanitarians supplied a positive answer, Rauch argues that the anti-humanitarian posture of the exponents of liberalism supplied a negative answer. The paper considers the humanitarian argument that puts the welfare of the people above the truth or anything else. Meanwhile, for the anti-humanitarians, the right to speak the truth must be guaranteed at all time. This paper argues that, in practice, the morality of truth telling is not only context bound, it also depends on what the truth is meant to achieve. Thus, the suspension of the truth may be consistent with morality in some medical and sensitive security situations due to the tendency to cause harm. The paper does not argue that the truth be suspended arbitrarily or for mischievous reasons. It only concludes by identifying some practical situations under which suspension of the truth may not be inconsistent with morality.en-US
dc.formatapplication/pdf
dc.identifierhttps://studia.reviste.ubbcluj.ro/index.php/subbphilosophia/article/view/413
dc.identifier10.24193/subbphil.2022.2.10
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14637/985
dc.languageeng
dc.publisherBabeș-Bolyai University / Cluj University Pressen-US
dc.relationhttps://studia.reviste.ubbcluj.ro/index.php/subbphilosophia/article/view/413/390
dc.rightsCopyright (c) 2022 Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Philosophiaen-US
dc.rightshttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0en-US
dc.sourceStudia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Philosophia; Volume 67, No. 2, August 2022; 187-201en-US
dc.source2065-9407
dc.source10.24193/subbphil.2022.2
dc.subjectTruth-telling, Harm, Liberal Science, Humanitarianism, Situational Moral Relativism.en-US
dc.titleSHOULD WE SUSPEND THE TRUTH TO PREVENT HARM?en-US
dc.typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
dc.typePeer-reviewed Articleen-US
dc.typetexten-US

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