The Old Man 403Constant claimed that the "moral principle stating that it is a duty to tell
the truth would make any society impossible if that principle were taken
singly and unconditionally." In particular, he argued that it was a duty to
tell the truth, but that every duty was based on a right that someone else
had, and that therefore the case might arise in which someone did not have
a right to be told the truth, and that, as a matter of fact, no one has a right
to a truth that harms others. Kant attacked the notion that someone might
have "a right to truth." He claimed that there could be no such right, but
he also claimed that a lie always harmed someone - if not a particular per¬
son, then humanity in general. "To be truthful (honest) in all declarations
is ... a sacred and unconditionally commanding law of reason that admits
of no expediency whatsoever." Anyone who tells a lie is answerable for any
of the consequences that might follow from the lie; but someone who tells
the truth is not liable for the consequences.
This essay, often attacked because of the alleged absurdity of its con¬
clusions, is a good example of Kant's rigorism. While some have wanted
to explain it away as a product of Kant's old age, it seems clear that it
represents his considered view on the subject, and that he would have
presented essentially the same arguments at the time he was writing the
Groundwork. It underlines his Stoic view of action. "Some things are up
to us, and some are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our im¬
pulses, desires, aversions — in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bod¬
ies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations or our offices,
or, that is, whatever is not our own doing. The things that are up to us are
by nature free, unhindered, and unimpeded; the things that are not up to
us are weak, enslaved, hindered, not our own."^74 Ethics is about things
that are properly our own affair or are "up to us," namely our acts. Ben¬
jamin Constant, by contrast, believed it to be relevant to things that are, at
least according to Kant, not properly our own affair, namely, the conse¬
quences of our acts. We cannot be responsible for all the things that follow
from our actions, but only for what we do. Constant does not understand
the difference between "doing harm" (nocere) and "doing wrong" (laedere).
We cannot always avoid the former. In fact, it would be unreasonable to
demand this; but we can and must at all costs avoid the latter.
Kant would probably also have liked to publish the essay "An Old Ques¬
tion Raised Again: Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?," for this
was in all likelihood the essay that Kant sent to the Berlinische Monatsschrift,
but the censors refused it on October 23, 1797.^75 Kant later included it in
The Dispute of the Faculties.