7 - Self-deception and connivance in deceit

Summary

SELF-DECEPTION AND SELF-DELUSION

Adrienne Rich (1980:188) comments that ‘In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves’. Instances of this progression have been presented in chapter 2. But deceiving oneself is not always a consequence of continued deception of others. Lytton (1852:204) claims that ‘the easiest person to deceive is one's own self’ and Nietzsche (1911:212) says much the same: ‘The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one's self; to lie to others is relatively exceptional’. Yet serious semantic problems are raised when we speak of self-deception (cf. Trivers 1985:416). Grotius (1925:613) takes one extreme view and says bluntly that ‘it is sufficiently clear that no one lies to himself, however false his statement may be’. Luckily, most other commentators have attempted to face the inherent difficulties in the notion of lying to oneself (Durandin 1972:405). Bok (1978:291) remarks that ‘self-deception offers difficult problems of definition’, and that whether self-deception is properly so called ‘is a question discussed since Plato’ (cf. Chisholm and Feehan 1977:158–159; Paulhus 1988a; Sackeim 1988). Demos (1960:588–589), indeed, argues that Plato's ‘true lie’ refers to lying to oneself.

Some of the incidents we commonly call self-deception are easily disposed of. When, for instance, I find that the road I expected would take me to A in fact leads me to B, I may well say ‘I deceived myself’.