For Kant, the German philosopher, lying is always an act to be banished, as it destroys trust within society and undermines the moral law in man. For Constant, the French philosopher, lying can be virtuous depending on the context. Crossed views.

LONG FORMAT ARTICLE, Eugène Praz | In his essay Action et réaction. Vie et aventures d'un couple (1999), originally composed but of firm intellectual rigor, Swiss literary critic Jean Starobinski revisited the concepts of action and reaction, and showed how they have served in the history of ideas, whether scientific, medical, psychological, literary, philosophical or political. The final chapter was devoted to their political aspect. It's worth coming back to it today, because in addition to serving as an illustration for Alain Badiou's Abrégé de métapolitique, published a year before Starobinski's essay, it demonstrates the easy handling, especially in politics, of the terms action, or progress, and reaction, and that nothing is more misleading than words of such generality. What's more, they encourage a tendency to split any political subject in two, always with a few nuances.

« Que l’autorité se borne à être juste, nous nous chargerons d’être heureux. » Benjamin Constant, De la liberté Crédit photo...