Is it better to be honest or good?

[scameter]

Is it better to understand how you truly feel and think and be honest about it, with yourself and others, and act based on that honesty, or is it better to have ideals of good behavior and to attempt to live by those ideals, whether you recognize your true feelings/thoughts or not?

[...]

Is it better to understand how you truly feel and think and be honest about it, with yourself and others, and act based on that honesty, or is it better to have ideals of good behavior and to attempt to live by those ideals, whether you recognize your true feelings/thoughts or not?

..this idea excludes honesty from good behaviour, and i don't think that good behaviour equals dishonesty in whatever form. IOW, being honest about your feelings/thoughts ís good behaviour eventhough i admit that sometimes it might conflict with social norms...

[scameter]

My point is, if you have an ideal of good, say the ideal of never committing adultery, but when confronted with the option to do such a thing, in your heart you want to and don't care about the consequences. Should you deny your honesty and follow your ideal, or not?

[Akamu]

My point is, if you have an ideal of good, say the ideal of never committing adultery, but when confronted with the option to do such a thing, in your heart you want to and don't care about the consequences. Should you deny your honesty and follow your ideal, or not?

Well, in this case, aren't you kind of sacrificing honesty (ie the vow you took in marriage) for the sake of honesty (remaining true to your feelings)? It seems as though if honesty and a moral ideal ever come into conflict, then pursuing one at the expense of the other will always yield consequences. This is a good question, but it needs to be considered on a case by case basis. One must also be careful to address all the other possibilities that go with it. For example, in the aforementioned scenario, one could choose to pursue that ideal...that is to remain loyal to your spouse and forsake the urge to act on this particular impulse. On the other hand, one could also explain the situation and then act upon their wishes. Both would be morally permissible I guess.

I don't think pitting honesty against our ideals should be our goal. Instead I think we should strive to make honesty and our ideals one in the same. Obviously this will usually imply first establishing a basis of ideals to live up to and then to adapt your life accordingly until these ideals became integrated into your being. If simple honesty preceded our ideals in every case, then the world would not be a great place to live.

[scameter]

Sacrificing the vow taken in marriage to be chaste is not dishonesty, it's disloyalty. But, other than that, thanks for answering.

[Akamu]

Sacrificing the vow taken in marriage to be chaste is not dishonesty, it's disloyalty. But, other than that, thanks for answering.

I didn't mean the act of sacrificing the vow itself. But committing adultery implies that you are not making your spouse privy to the act, hence dishonesty.

[scameter]

Adultery doesn't necessarily imply not telling your wife. You could do it right in front of her and it's still adultery, because you're having sex with another person while married.

[Akamu]

Well yes I am aware that adultery's definition doesn't limit it to secrecy. However in most cases where the spouse is aware of the act, then there is no more marriage haha. This is why I mentioned that, if the marriage is just going to end anyway, might as well fess up to your intention before committing the act so that you may clear up whatever problems you have in your marriage and then remove the adultery aspect of your action. At least this way you are honest to yourself and to your spouse. More times than most, however, the person who is tempted to commit adultery would like to indulge themselves in their desire for another as well as maintain the stability they have in their marriage. This would require secrecy unless their spouse is very liberal (in sexual terms) or lacks any trace of self-esteem.

[...]

My point is, if you have an ideal of good, say the ideal of never committing adultery, but when confronted with the option to do such a thing, in your heart you want to and don't care about the consequences. Should you deny your honesty and follow your ideal, or not?

..that's not so difficult, is it? This is about honesty, and before one can be honest to others, one has to be honest to onesself. Therefore, if you have an ideal of never commiting adultery and you uphold this ideal in all honesty, then you'd know that when the chance of doing it presents itself the ideal takes precedence, not the breaking of it...

[Taeguk]

I think there's a difference between being honest and discarding one's ideals in favor of leading a depraved existence.

Acknowledging that I am tempted to commit adultery is honesty and self-reflection. But acting on the impulse to commit adultery is not "being honest"; it's simply discarding one's ideals. True honesty lies in admitting that we don't always live up to our ideals; it doesn't necessarily involve the next step of saying, "Well, it's hard living up to ideals, and I'm too lazy to do it. I'll just sleep with somebody else."

I think dots and Akamu have the right idea. The true ideal is to thread together honesty and our ideals. While I disagree with Plato on a number of grounds, I think he's basically right when he affirms the mutual identity of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Hence goodness and honesty are never truly in conflict; if they appear to be in conflict it is because our ideas of "good" and "truth" do not conform to the reality of goodness and truth.

[scameter]

You seem to have an idea of honesty that I'm not expressing. By honest, I mean recognizing our feelings and knowing exactly how it is we feel about something and being honest about it, rather than attempt to suppress, remove or avoid it. That's what I mean by honesty. I don't see how that "goodness and honesty are never truly in conflict; if they appear to be in conflict it is because our ideas of "good" and "truth" do not conform to the reality of goodness and truth." I think you're confusing being honest about our feelings, and being honest about what we conceive of as good and/or true. I'm speaking of the former.

[...]

You seem to have an idea of honesty that I'm not expressing. By honest, I mean recognizing our feelings and knowing exactly how it is we feel about something and being honest about it, rather than attempt to suppress, remove or avoid it. That's what I mean by honesty. I don't see how that "goodness and honesty are never truly in conflict; if they appear to be in conflict it is because our ideas of "good" and "truth" do not conform to the reality of goodness and truth." I think you're confusing being honest about our feelings, and being honest about what we conceive of as good and/or true. I'm speaking of the former.

..being honest about your feelings does not mean that you have to act on those feelings. What an honest person would do is tell their partner about those feelings without having cheated first...

[scameter]

That's my point. Should one act on the feelings they are honest about feeling, or should they act on their ideals?

[...]

That's my point. Should one act on the feelings they are honest about feeling, or should they act on their ideals?

..in the case of adultery, they should act on the ideal...

[Trevor]

Is it better to understand how you truly feel and think and be honest about it, with yourself and others, and act based on that honesty, or is it better to have ideals of good behavior and to attempt to live by those ideals, whether you recognize your true feelings/thoughts or not?

I think the second one because it is easier to do.

[Taeguk]

..being honest about your feelings does not mean that you have to act on those feelings. What an honest person would do is tell their partner about those feelings without having cheated first...

Yes. This was exactly my point earlier. Scameter has essentially conflated "honesty" with "acting on whatever it is I feel like doing". There is no necessary relationship between the two. I can honesty assess myself and understand how I feel without shrugging my shoulders and throwing my ideals out the window.

[scameter]

Taeguk, the entire point of this thread was to ask, should I follow how I feel when I look at my feelings honestly, or should I follow me ideals. I'm not rewriting honesty, anymore than I'm rewriting ideals. I'm just asking which to follow, which fortunately, ... and trevor understood.

[daveo]

the entire point of this thread was to ask, should I follow how I feel when I look at my feelings honestly, or should I follow me ideals.

do you mean:
an "honest" appraisal of one's feelings motivates him/her to act in a manner that is contrary to his/her ideals?

if so -and i think this is what you're driving at- then i still don't believe that the two are seperate. in fact, i would invite you to consider that a TRULY honest appraisal would either fall in line with the ideal, or would force a reorganization of one's ideals.

the emphasis here should be placed on the 'looking at my feelings honestly' part. if you inspected a particular issue and found that you honestly and truly feel motivated to act, that appraisal should fall in direct line with your ideals. if not, you have just rewritten your ideals. in which, case, you act based on the new set of ideals.

i'll use your example of infidelity.
you have an ideal that you will remain faithful. but then you are confronted with a possible adultrous relationship, and you perform some introspection. sure, you WANT to endulge (he or she is hot), but if you are being honest with yourself, you cannot reject the consequences of infidelity, both to your sense of ideals and to your spouse. so you must act accordingly.

now if your introspection yields the opposite result, say for instance, you have been in living hell with your spouse, and your true soul mate is the potential co-adulterer, then you make the rational decision to discard your previous ideal for a revised ideal that places more importance on finding your soul mate. you then go about the internal process of rationalizing your behavior, and insodoing, you have just changed your ideal.

of course, the other result could be that, upon introspection, you find that your ideals remain in tact, yet you cannot overcome the impulse to endulge. could THIS be what you're talking about? i guess in some weird way, one might classify this overwhelming impulse to be the ultimate in honest motivations (it is, afterall, purely biological).

[Taeguk]

Taeguk, the entire point of this thread was to ask, should I follow how I feel when I look at my feelings honestly, or should I follow me ideals. I'm not rewriting honesty, anymore than I'm rewriting ideals. I'm just asking which to follow, which fortunately, ... and trevor understood.

I understood what you were asking, and I answered it---one can honestly assess one's feelings and be aware of them without acting on them.

I really can't get more specific than that---it depends on what your ideals are, what your feelings on, what the context is, etc. There are no universal rules about this sort of thing.

[schrodinger]

Is this deja vu, or the "stuck in a moment" thread all over again?

[scameter]

Schrodinger, it probably is exactly the same.

[schrodinger]

I thought it seemed familiar. In any case, I don’t feel qualified to answer such a general hypothetical question, and probably even less qualified if the question were more specific. The only thing that I can offer up is an insight of how I felt about the recent steroid abuse scandal in major league baseball. I figure those players who were dishonest about using steroids thought that winning was all that mattered. To them, winning was a good thing that outweighed the dishonesty to the other teams, to the fans, to baseball and to themselves. But I think they are finding out that winning or losing is only good or bad in the short term but dishonesty, like a time-release poison, sticks around a long time. It seems to me that good or bad are relative, subjective things but honesty is far more basic and objective. In that sense, honesty is an absolute and probably trumps “good” or “bad”. I probably don’t know what I am talking about.

[Jiraiyathesage]

Hmm Scameter I don't see why both those ideas can't be accomodated into a coherent philosophy/way of thinking. I dislike lying and am known for my truthfulness to the point of bluntness on occasion, but for that people know they can rely on me for telling the truth. On the other hand I also live by my ideals, willpower, hard work, tenacity etc. I am notorious for keeping to my arguably over high moral standards and strong convictions, it has made me disliked quite a lot. People can balance selfishness and selflessness but on the whole the human race does not I think, hence the whole range of problems with the world. We can define good however we please and never end the argument, that's part of philosophy. But I would rarely consider dishonesty a good thing, unless it was to protect a family member from being hurt etc, but that's special circumstance.

[scameter]

I wonder which is more popular in modern times, syncretism or relativism in philosophy.

[schrodinger]

Neither. It is excretism.