Wittgenstein and the fatal propensity of politicians to lie

Lying is a terrible thing in any circumstances. When politicians and governments lie, it is a sin against society as a whole, against justice and civilisation. In Ray Monk’s admirable life of Wittgenstein, I learn that at the age of eight he asked himself the question: ‘Why should one tell the truth, if it’s to one’s advantage to tell a lie?’ This was the first time he posed a philosophical query. His answer was a kind of Kantian categorical imperative: ‘One must be truthful, and that is the end of the matter. The “Why?” is inappropriate and cannot be answered.’ He concluded, quite young, that one had an inviolable duty to be true to oneself, and part of this duty was to be truthful to others.

As for politicians, Wittgenstein’s youthful hero was the satirical truth-teller Karl Kraus, editor of Die Fackel (the torch), which he founded in 1899, when Witters was ten. And Kraus laid down: ‘Politics is what a man does in order to conceal what he is and what he himself does not know.’ So much for the Habermasians and other leaders of European Union thought, who believe politics must be pursued to amend the evils of societies shaped by the market. Actually Witters himself thought politics irrelevant. He said in later life: ‘Just improve yourself — that is all you can do to improve the world.’ He thought lying was inherent among politicians in that the venture in which they were engaged was itself a fantasy — that the condition of humankind could be radically improved by public means.

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Julie Burchill

Will I ever pee again?

Yet it is a historical fact that lying among politicians has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished. There was once a strict English tradition that politicians, especially those in government who had sworn the Privy Counsellor’s oath, told nothing but the truth, especially in the House of Commons, or the High Court of Parliament.