Review by Choice Review
These 14 excellent, highly representative essays on the longstanding philosophical debates over deception/self-deception are divided into two parts: "Practices of Deception and Self-Deception" and "... Theory and the Ethics." Contributors include philosophical luminaries Robert Solomon, Harry Frankfurt, and Paul Ekman. Although the editor provides a brief but substantive overview, the book has no comprehensive bibliography. Most of the essays address basic conceptual issues involving key terms--deception, self-deception, truth, falsehood, trust, honesty, "high-minded lies," and Frankfurt's notion of "bullshit" (see On Bullshit, 2005; and On Truth, CH, May'07, 44-4979). The essays represent a good cross-section of philosophical history: Plato, Nietzsche, Sartre, Hegel, Lacan, and more. Several take issue with the Kantian absolutist moral framework that forbids all forms of lying. All agree that deception plays a key role in human relationships, and that human beings are not very effective purveyors or decoders of lies (and other forms of deception). Critics of this line of philosophical discourse will point to its relative failure to include recent empirical studies by evolutionary biologists that clearly indicate the natural world is teeming with deception, and that its ultimate explanation (among all species) can be traced to natural/sexual selection. See David Smith's Why We Lie (CH, Feb'05, 42-3347). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through faculty/researchers. R. F. White College of Mount St. Joseph
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
