Pinocchio knows: the unconscious knowledge of the conscious lie.

From little white lies to the deepest, darkest ones, it is an accepted fact that we—like the boy who cried wolf—lie very often, at least three times a day. The thesis of this erudite and entertaining book is that lies are structured like paradoxes. Lying is a common social manifestation that is fraught with contradictions: we lie quite frequently, but we hate liars, and we detest above all being lied to. We know that most politicians lie, hoping that they lie reasonably, as it were, but when they are caught in the act, their careers are ruined. The common root to these phenomena goes back to the paradigmatic figure of the paradox: I am lying but I tell the truth when I say that I am lying.

In The Ethics of the Lie, Jean-Michel Rabaté examines this ancient problem in a new light, starting with a contemporary American context. He enters into the web of lies spun by the media, turns the microscope on the U.S. presidency, explores the dynamics of family lies, and even analyzes Hollywood's role in reenacting these dilemmas. Do we live in an age when disinformation has reached such a fevered pitch that we can dismiss everything presented as "fact" or "news"? In questioning this widespread skepticism, Rabaté deconstructs the pathology of lies and their logical mechanisms, leading us back to the continuing debates of the great philosophers and their philosophical foundations—Plato, Nietzsche, and Aristotle—and in doing so, swears to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Jean-Michel Rabaté, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania since 1992, has published about fifteen books on Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, psychoanalysis and literary theory. His most recent books include The Ghosts of Modernity, (University of Florida Press, 1996), Joyce and the Politics of Egoism (Cambridge UP, 2001) and Jacques Lacan and Literature (Palgrave, 2001). He has recently edited two collections of essays, Writing the Image after Roland Barthes, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997) and Jacques Lacan in America (The Other Press, Fall 2000), The Cambridge Companion to Jacques Lacan. (2002) and The Future of Theory (Blackwell, 2002). Recent publications: (2003 Cambridge) Companion to Lacan, editor, 2003 On the diagram: the art of Marjorie Welish, co-edited with Aaron Levy, (2004 Palgrave) Advances to James Joyce, editor, 2004 Architecture Against death: On Arakwa and Gins, two volumes, editor, and 2005 Logiques du Mensonge, Calmann- Levy. Most recent publications William Anastasi’s Pataphysical Society, co-edited, Slought, 2005, Companion pour Jacques Lacan, Bayard, 2005., Given: 1) Art, 2) Crime, Sussex University Press, 2006, Helene Cixous--On Cities, co-edited, Slought, 2006, Lacan Literario, Siglo 21, 2007,1913: The cradle of modernism, Blackwell, July 2007. Forthcoming: The Ethic of the Lie, The Other Press, 2008.