Bernulf: telling lies is not really a virtue in my opinion – but being able to judge when a lie is being told, and being able to judge those situations in which it is best to respond to a lie with a lie of one’s own, these are aspects of the virtue of truth as I see it

I agree entirely.

Your citation of Hávamál raises a pretty good point, (one that I was hoping someone would raise) that our forebears felt themselves under no obligation to speak the truth to someone who was trying to swindle them. I’m curious about which edition of the Hollander translation you’re using – the one I have, the second (revised) edition, renders stanza 42 of Hávamál thusly:

With his friend a man should be friends ever,
and pay back gift for gift;
laughter for laughter he learn to give,
and eke lesing for lies.

For those who have no copy of the Poetic Edda sitting on their desk, you can find another rendering of this stanza here (also stanza 42). Stanzas 45 and 46 (in either version) would also be relevant to this topic.

Something else I find of interest, somewhat along this vein, is when Sigurth lied about his name to the dying Fáfnir, because it was believed that the dying could actually curse their foes if they knew their true names (Fáfnismál, stanzas 1 – 2, in either the Hollander or Bellows translations).

When I discussed the commitment to truth in my post, I deliberately avoided saying that a commitment to this virtue meant that we would never lie; and focused instead on the judgment involved in sorting truth from lie when dealing with others. I did this because telling lies is not really a virtue in my opinion – but being able to judge when a lie is being told, and being able to judge those situations in which it is best to respond to a lie with a lie of one’s own, these are aspects of the virtue of truth as I see it; so, like I said, I’m glad you raised this point :-)

I wanted to say that I agree with you regarding multiple realities, and multiple realities really demand multiple truths. The idea of a capital “T” truth is really self-limiting and denies reality rather than accepting and explaining, much less defining it. We should not place limits on how we view the world around us, because our limits are self-imposed and exist inside us but not as part of the external world or realities.

So I think your remarks about absolutism are right on the mark. It makes me think of the old line about enforcing rules because they are the rules. Rules sometimes have little to do with reality and impose an unrealistic structure upon something that is actually quite fluid and often chaotic. As a manager, I always felt that the rules needed to be bent to suit the moment and I was fortunate at times to have bosses who agreed with me.

As an example of the absurd lengths to which we can take the enforcement of rules (and this might be applicable to truth as well) is the story of Bob Farrell who founded a restaurant based on the concept of good customer service (Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour). One day, one of his managers refused to give a customer additional pickles, saying that he’d have to pay for them. The customer responded that he’d never had to pay for them before, but the manager insisted that was the rules. The outcome was the slogan, “Give ‘em the pickle!” An absolutist approach, whether to rules or to truth, can be self-defeating.

I thought also that I’d mention with respect to lies that our Heathen ancestors felt to be under no compunction to tell the truth to those who had lied to them. One lie deserves another:

A man should be loyal through life to friends,
And return gift for gift,
Laugh when they laugh,
but with lies repay
A false foe who lies.
(Hávamál – Hollander translation)