Preliminaries to Developing an Account of Honesty

Abstract This chapter provides relevant background and stage setting. In section 1.1, the focus is on the virtue of honesty, as opposed to honest actions. Section 1.2 then turns to the scope of the virtue, or the kinds of behaviors to which it applies. Here the focus is on cases of lying, misleading, cheating, stealing, and promise-breaking. Section 1.3 wraps up the chapter by outlining four desiderata which any promising account of honesty should attempt to satisfy, with the first one being to develop a response to what is called the ‘unification challenge’ given that honesty pertains to so many different kinds of morally relevant behavior.