The ethics of gossiping: an objection against a Kantian account of gossip

Abstract

Is gossip morally permissible? In a phrase such as this where one signals that they are steering away from ordinary conversation and towards gossip, “I don’t mean to gossip, but…”, I seek to understand the following: what makes gossip different from ordinary conversation, why there is an attempt to alienate oneself from fault through “I don’t mean to”, the moral implications behind gossip and if these moral implications hold. In this paper, I question the plausibility of Kantianism in evaluating the moral permissibility of gossip. To do this, I define gossip, examine Cecile Fabre’s Kantian account of gossip and make my response. I propose that the Kantian perspective towards the moral impermissibility of gossip is inadequate because of three reasons: gossip is morally valuable in real life hence necessary, gossip does not wrong the subjects of gossip, and gossip does not wrong fellow perpetrators of gossip. This leads me to the conclusion that gossip is morally permissible. Granted, this conclusion cannot be definitive. There are other considerations in examining gossip that are worth looking at, but for this paper, I prove that the above reasons are sufficient for my argument.