Honesty is simply the absence of deceit.
If that's all you need, don't read the rest because it will probably seem very rigid and I'm almost positive it will be so boring that you will cry.
This definition of honesty was stumbled upon as I shared stories with a close friend who has recently returned home from college. We were talking about the importance of being honest and the importance of knowing what and how much to say. What we initially discovered was that honesty is best defined negatively as opposed to positively. This thought remained in my head for about a week, and then I thought about it for almost an entire shift at work earlier this week and scribbled down what I could during my breaks. It's very academic and ridiculous, but it was a good exercise.
Honesty is complicated. If we try to define it with the things we should say we will run into problems because it's not always good to just say everything that is true to everyone. It's not helpful to be a firehose of honesty. It's difficult to determine what level of honest disclosure of information is appropriate and it's much simpler and easier to determine whether or not deceit is present based on what we omit from the truth or what we add to it. We know when we're bending the truth by adding extra things that didn't really happen to our story or completely changing it to cover up something we are ashamed of or even when we say most of what is true and simply leave out parts that could tarnish our reputation or the reputation of others. That part of honesty is fairly easy.
The difficulty lies in how much information we should disclose to others when being honest. A definition that is nice in theory but unhelpful in practice is this: we should disclose just enough information in order to not be deceptive. How do we know what that amount is? Maybe the best judge is the conscience. Everyone has one, so it's not something you have to train or grow or develop. On the other hand our response to the nudgings of our conscience is something we have to train. We have to respond the right way to what our conscience tells us. (I could get into the origin of the conscience and the deeper philosophical and theological basis of what it actually is, but that would be possibly more dull and boring that this already is. This must be what it's like to write textbooks.) It may be as simple as something like social competence. Some people have it and some people don't. Some people know the right things to say and do around others and some people just don't. It may be the same way with knowing when and how much to tell people as we are being honest.
In the pursuit of honesty, it seems there are two main variables that determine how much disclosure is appropriate: the category of person with whom we are being honest and how much the target of honesty knows us. The categories of people are as follows: the self, the individual, and the community. We should tell ourselves everything without exception. We are doing ourselves absolutely no favors by keeping information from ourselves. When it comes to another individual, it gets a bit more complex. I think the amount disclosed to the other person should contain everything pertinent or critical to your relationship to them, and that anything beyond that should be carefully weighed against how much the extra information may help or hurt them. When we have to be honest to a large group or community, disclosure should be limited to the information that affects our relationship with the entire community. If individuals within the community find deceit in your honesty, it becomes an individual matter and extra information should be given if and only if it is any of their business. If they are simply looking for juicy information, you aren't helping anybody by giving it to them in the name of honesty. We can do just as much damage by telling people too much as we can by lying through omission.
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