Query:

You’ve written and taught about moral prohibitions which have no exceptions.  Thomas Aquinas gives as an example the prohibition of lying.  Aristotle would never deny that someone has the right to lie to his enemies, but as you explain, Aquinas holds that lying is always immoral.

But while lying is not something noble or befitting the conduct of a gentleman, isn’t it a necessity?  Necessity sometimes triumphs over the noble.

I do not mean to imply that the thought of this sublime genius, Aquinas, is naïvely inflexible.  The natural law would even require a legislator to take the deficiencies of his subjects into account when legislating.  But it is certainly the case that his natural law teaching would not allow a city to take certain necessary actions to preserve its existence if it involved something prohibited by the natural law.

Reply:

Your question is certainly topical.  The Rasmussen polling organization, RMG Research, found that among economically elite voters who talk about politics every day, 69% say they would rather cheat than lose a close election.

Would it help to make a distinction?  For it seems to me that your objection mixes together three different issues:

1.  Are there any exceptionless prohibitions?

2.  Is the prohibition of lying, properly understood, one of them?

3.  What is the proper understanding of a lie?  Is the classical definition right, so that a lie is saying what one knows to be false with the intention of deceiving?  Or is a lie only speaking in such a way to someone who has a right to the truth?  Or does anything which conceals the truth count as a lie, so that, for example, silences, disguises, ambushes, and polite equivocations are kinds of lie?

To put it my point another way:  I wonder whether your objection to the idea of exceptionless prohibitions may really be an objection to certain exceptionless prohibitions, especially lying – or, perhaps, to certain exceptionless prohibitions understood in a certain way.

One way to settle which kind of objection you are making is to ask yourself whether there is any prohibition at all which you would view as exceptionless.  Consider the question and see what you think.

How about "Never rape your mother," or "Never torture a baby to death"?  Would you ever do those things so that good would result?  If not, then you are really on Thomas Aquinas’s side.  It may be an exaggeration to say that your disagreement is only about the details – but at least you agree that there are some exceptionless prohibitions.  We must not do what is intrinsically evil even so that good will result.