Meaning and Definition of Honesty

Definition of honesty

Honesty is a value or quality of human beings that has a close relationship with the principles of truth and justice and moral integrity. An honest person is one that seeks to always prepend the truth in his thoughts, expressions and actions. Thus, this quality not only has to do with the relationship of an individual with another or others or the world, but it also can be said that a subject is honest with itself when it has a significant degree of self-consciousness and is consistent with what you think. The opposite of honesty would be dishonesty, a practice that is commonly rejected in contemporary societies, since it is associated with the hypocrisy, corruption, crime and the lack of ethics.
Throughout the history of philosophy, honesty has been long studied by different thinkers. For example, Socrates devoted himself to inquire about its meaning and to inquire about what is truly this quality. Later, philosophers such as Immanuel Kant would try to compose a series of general ethical principles which include among them the honest conduct. Another philosopher, Confucius, distinguishing different levels of honesty for his ethics: and, according to their degree of depth, called Li, Yi and Ren. It is debated if honesty is an innate feature of mankind or if it is the result of their interaction in society. From a point of view of animal behavior, other vertebrates tend to favor your condition individually and, in varying degrees, of their offspring above that of other congeners. However, in primates, this phenomenon is less "individualist" and reaches its peak in the human being.
In this sense, honesty (such as ethical or moral quality in society) is also closely tied to the sincerity, consistency, integrity, respect and dignity. But as the human truth can never be absolute, honesty is also a subjective value, insofar as it depends on the context and the actors involved. For this reason it becomes very difficult to establish shared moral standards of a society or culture to another, and even among groups or between individuals, these conceptions can radically change and what to one is a sign of honesty to another is not. Thus, in some cultures is accepted as an honest fact predation of other peoples to favour the development of society; This factor is not well seen in other civilizations. Similarly, piracy is clearly a dishonest act for most of people, but it is seen as a "justifiable" attitude against abuses of the costs of books, music, or software programs. In a parallel, ancient maritime piracy was condemned as a form of theft by many Governments, while it was seen by other Nations as a sort of strange heroism.
In the different fields of a typical society, in addition, the concept of honesty is variable and more or less prioritized. For example, priority is given to honesty in science, but in the political fields this notion is much more debatable. However, contamination of honesty has come to different fields, in which the condemnation of this fact is very versatile and depends on the applied standards. Thus, while a dishonest event is repudiated without doubt by the scientific community when shown a plagiarism or fraud, unfortunately that example is not recognized on many occasions in the powers of the State.