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We come next to the vexing problem of telling the truth to the axe murderer. The axeman knocks at our front door and, with a mad gleam in his eye, asks if his intended victim is inside. Should we answer truthfully that he is, or should we lie? Could we perhaps rephrase the principle concerned into ‘truth telling is usually right’ or, ‘truth telling is right unless there are compelling reasons against it’? Kant would claim – and is he not right? – that these formulations do not sound like moral principles. Furthermore, as Kant argues forcefully, these formulations would undermine the credibility of all communication. No-one would know when there was a good reason for lying, and so when they were being lied to.

So do we have to abandon the axeman’s intended victim to his fate? Here we need to make a point clearly stated by Kant himself, and distinguish between general principles, and their application in concrete, individual cases. One cannot emphasise enough that general principles – whether those formulated by Kant, or Aristotle, or enshrined in the Bible – cannot lift the burden of personal judgement from individuals. You cannot feed your principles into a computer and just press a button. Every actual case has unique features to be taken into account.

We can be a little more specific about such choices. Staying with the axe murderer, it should be plain that more than one imperative/moral principle is relevant to the situation. Certainly we should tell the truth; but do we not also have a duty to protect an innocent man from harm? Further, do we not have an obligation to fight evil? We are confronted with a conflict of values here. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no explicit discussion of this issue in Kant. One could assume, however, that his general approach of distinguishing the lesser from the greater evil should be applied. I think Kant might say that although lying is never right, it might be the lesser evil in some cases. Peter Rickman, 2011 reprinted in Philosophy Now Dec 2016