How People Commonly Understand the Word Honesty - Essay Example

Honesty Honesty is a virtue adored all over the world. The term honesty refers to the quality of being upright, sincere frank, and truthful. An honest person is courageous and fearless. Additionally, he or she does not bow his or her head before others. Living an honest life means that a person exposes one true self to others (Pryor 14). Therefore, the aim of this paper is to describe how people commonly understand the word honesty. This paper will also describe the problems hidden inside the word and also show what the term misses explaining.

Honesty as people understand it is important since it acts as the stick holding people together. Notably, honesty helps people to conquer most of their problems. Honesty as people understand it is the foundation upon which people build their relationships in. the relationship may be with their friends, their family, or their society at large. When a person is honest with his or her friends, family or loved ones, there is the creation of a feeling of trustworthy (Thoennes 17). However, a man is basically born with the qualities of honesty, but these qualities will present themselves based on how h or she was brought up.

Basically, if the parents are honest, even though it cannot be said that their children will be honest, a higher percentage of people turn out to be like their parents. Conversely, there are problems hidden behind the term honesty. There are some situations in which by being honest, one may inflict lots of stress and pain to other people. A good example is the situation where a doctor may decide not to his or her patient directly that he or she is suffering from a fatal disease such as cancer.

Even though it is the obligation of the doctor to tell the patient the truth, the doctor has to keep quite so as to avoid causing lots of pain to the patient. This shows that it is not all-inclusive that a person be honest all the time. This however, contradicts what the term and how people perceive the meaning of the term honesty. This builds an assumption that there are sometimes people need to justify what is the best resolution since not telling the truth in some cases is the best way a person can protect other people from getting hurt.

The term honesty overlooks many issues. As said in the above paragraph, there are some situations whereby people have to be dishonest in order to protect other people. However, according to the definition of honesty, this is wrong. According to how people understand the term, everyone should tell the truth no matter the consequences of the truth. Therefore, as per my views, the term morality should be used in the place of honesty. The reason for this is that the term morality does describe honesty but in a way different level.

Morality refers to the differentiation between what is wrong and what is right. In the case of the doctor, this would apply since the doctor has to choose what is right and what is wrong as per the health and wellbeing of the patient. The doctor can choose not to tell the patient that he or she has few days to live due to the cancer. This would be right as per morality since it protects the patient but is wrong when it comes to the term honesty. Work cited Pryor, Kimberley J. Honesty. Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish Benchmark, 2009. Print. Thoennes, Keller K. Honesty. Mankato, Minn: Capstone Press, 2005. Print.