To Be Honest

This article explores honesty as a virtuous disposition that one should wish to see enacted by children entering adulthood, and as something ennobling rather than owed. Rather than define it in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, the article probes its various dimensions (from an aversion to lying to an inclination for honest work) and some of the challenges faced by those who would enact it in an excellent manner, including the fact that we are not transparent to ourselves. That said, certain general characteristics are ventured including sincerity, truthfulness, forthrightness, and integrity as well as a kind of carefulness that sometimes favors an artful restraint. Such dimensions only become apparent, however, when assuming the task of concretizing the virtue of honesty through its situated enactment, a process that can lead us to even be honest about how difficult it is to know when and whether we are being honest.