The Faintest Passion

Abstract

1. My title is taken from an observation by A. E. Housman. “The faintest of all human passions,” he wrote, “is the love of truth.” There are two senses in which a passion may be faint: it may be weak, or it may only be difficult to discern. Housman certainly intended the former. But be that as it may, there is a passion that, in both senses, is even fainter than our love of truth. Surely the very faintest human passion – both the least salient and the least robust – is our love of the truth about ourselves. The ability both to believe something and at the same time to conceal this from oneself is a bit paradoxical. Philosophers have found it difficult to explain how we do this. There is no problem, however, in understanding why . The facts about ourselves are often hard to take. When they move us to self-deception, it is because we find them irreconcilable with what we want to believe. We hide from the truth, it seems clear, because it conflicts with our self-love. My theme here, however, is not self-deception. I am aiming at another enemy of the truth about ourselves – one whose relation to self-love is rather more complex and uncertain. My approach will be some what oblique. I begin with a question about lying. 2. When we object to being the victim of a lie, just what is it that we find so objectionable?

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