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Hypocrisy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Béla Szabados
Béla Szabados*
Affiliation:
University of Regina and University of Lethbridge
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Extract

What is it to be a hypocrite? Gilbert Ryle's answer is the by now commonly held one: to be hypocritical is to “try to appear activated by a motive other than one's real motive”; again, it is “deliberately to refrain from saying what comes to one's lips, while pretending to say frankly things one does not mean.” Can this be the right answer? My aim is to show that it cannot. In doing this I hope to gesture towards a richer understanding of our notion of hypocrisy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , June 1979 , pp. 195 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1979

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References

1 Ryle, Gilbert, The Concept of Mind (london: Hutchinson, 1949), p. 173.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 181.

3 Ibid., p. 173.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., p. 172.

6 Ibid., p. 173.

7 Ibid., p. 174.

8 Ibid., pp. 134-35. For a further discussion of Ryle's views on ‘belief', see my paper ‘Rylean “Belief“’ in Philosophical Studies (in press).

9 Ayler Maude in his introduction to one of Tolstoy's works. (The World's Classics, Oxford.)Google Scholar

10 R. M., Hare suggests this way out of the difficulty in his Freedom and Reason (Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 79–80.Google Scholar

11 Ryle, op. cit., p. 174.

12 Ibid., p. 173.

13 Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield (London: Oxford University Press), p. 575.Google Scholar

14 Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Twilight of the Idols (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), pp. 73–74.Google Scholar

15 Ryle, op. cit., p. 173.

16 Ibid., p. 172.

17 Hare, op, cit., p. 77.

18 Fingarette, Herbert, Self-Deception (london: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 54.Google Scholar

19 Butler, joseph, Fifteen Sermons, ed. W. R., Mathews (london: Bell and Sons, 1969).Google Scholar See Sermon X entitled ‘Upon Self-Deceit'.

20 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Ethics, translated by Smith, N. H. (london: SCM Press, 1955), p. 164.Google Scholar

21 Hume, David, “Of Self-Love', appendix 2 to An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, in Philosophical Works, vol. 4, ed. Green, T. H. and Grose, T. H. (london, 1882), pp. 269·70.Google Scholar

22 For my views on ‘self-deception', see ‘Wishful Thinking and Self-Deception', Analysis (1973); and ‘Self-Deception', Canadian journal of Philosophy (1974).

23 A previous version of this paper was read at the 1978 meetings of the Canadian Philosophical Association in London, Ontario. In rewriting it, I have learned from Kai Nielsen, John King-Farlow, Ronald de Sousa, Steven Patten and Andy Brook.