Subjects of Deceit

Philosophy has traditionally concerned itself with truth and the knowledge of truth, but in recent years these concerns have been undermined or redirected. Systematic philosophy is said to be dead. Thus epistemology, according to this popular series of views, is properly transformed into epistemologies. If we accept multiple epistemologies, however, truth and lying become even more frightening and elusive: lying always coexists with truth. In this book, Alison Leigh Brown explores the connection between epistemological and moral "lying." She shows that although telling a lie (a moral category) is not the same thing as being in untruth (an epistemological category), these two aspects of life are related. Throughout the book, a phenomenology of deceit is interspersed with a continuing dialogue between the phenomenologist and one of her students.