Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Prologue
- 1 Deception and the rhetoric of Athenian identity
- 2 Deceiving the enemy: negotiation and anxiety
- 3 Athens and the ‘noble lie’
- 4 The rhetoric of anti-rhetoric: Athenian oratory
- 5 Thinking with the rhetoric of anti-rhetoric
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index locorum
- General index
2 - Deceiving the enemy: negotiation and anxiety
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Prologue
- 1 Deception and the rhetoric of Athenian identity
- 2 Deceiving the enemy: negotiation and anxiety
- 3 Athens and the ‘noble lie’
- 4 The rhetoric of anti-rhetoric: Athenian oratory
- 5 Thinking with the rhetoric of anti-rhetoric
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index locorum
- General index
Summary
We are bred up to feel it a disgrace ever to succeed by falsehood … we will keep hammering along with the conviction that honesty is the best policy, and that truth always wins in the long run. These pretty little sentiments do well for a child's copy-book but a man who acts on them had better sheath his sword for ever.
These words were written by Sir Garnet Wolseley, a former Commander-in-Chief of the British army, for The Soldier's Handbook of 1869. They were recycled in the form of a plaque which hung in the operations room of the London Controlling Section, a secret bureau set up by Churchill during the Second World War which was specifically tasked to plan stratagems to deceive the Germans about Allied operations. Churchill famously remarked that ‘in war-time, truth is so precious, that she should be attended by a bodyguard of lies’.
Sociologists, historians and journalists have categorised warfare as an area of human activity where lies are to be expected. But the morality of using deceit against an enemy has often required exploration and explanation. For Christian theologians, the use of lies and tricks against an enemy has been justified by placing such tactics under the general rubric of ‘just war theory’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens , pp. 85 - 142Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000