Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is the act of pretending to have belief

Belief

Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.- Belief, knowledge and epistemology :The terms belief and knowledge are used differently in philosophy....

s, opinion

Opinion

An opinion is a belief that may or may not be backed up with evidence, but which cannot be proved with that evidence. It is normally a subjective statement and may be the result of an emotion or an interpretation of facts; people may draw opposing opinions from the same facts.-Epistemology:In...

s, virtue

Virtue

Virtue is moral excellence. A virtue is a character trait or quality valued as being good.Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting individual and collective well-being, and thus good by definition. The opposite of virtue is vice.-Virtues and values:Virtues can be placed into a...

s, feeling

Feeling

Feeling is the nominalization of "to feel". The word was first used in the English language to describe the physical sensation of touch either through experience or perception. The word is also used to describe experiences, other than the physical sensation of touch, such as "a feeling of warmth"...

s, qualities

Quality (philosophy)

A quality is an attribute or a property. Attributes are ascribable, by a subject, whereas properties are possessible. Some philosophers assert that a quality cannot be defined...

, or standard

Standard

A technical standard is an established norm or requirement. It is usually a formal document that establishes uniform engineering or technical criteria, methods, processes and practices....

s that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy is thus a kind of lie. Hypocrisy may come from a desire to hide from others actual motives or feelings.

Hypocrisy is not simply an inconsistency between what is advocated and what is done. Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and political conservative, and has been...

 made this point when he wrote about the misuse of the charge of "hypocrisy" in Rambler No. 14:

Etymology

The word hypocrisy comes from the Greek

Greek language

Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...

 ὑπόκρισις (hypokrisis), which means "play-acting", "acting out", "coward" or "dissembling". The word hypocrite is from the Greek word ὑποκρίτης (hypokrites), the agentive noun

Agent noun

In linguistics, an agent noun is a word that is derived from another word denoting an action, and that identifies an entity that does that action. For example, "driver" is the agent noun corresponding to the verb "to drive". The endings "-er" and "-or" are commonly used in English to form agent...

 associated with υποκρίνομαι (hypokrinomai), i.e. "I play a part." Both derive from the verb κρίνω, "judge" (»κρίση, "judgement" »κριτική (kritiki), "critics") presumably because the performance of a dramatic text by an actor was to involve a degree of interpretation, or assessment, of that text.

The word is an amalgam of the Greek prefix hypo-, meaning "under", and the verb "krinein", meaning "to sift or decide". Thus the original meaning implied a deficiency in the ability to sift or decide. This deficiency, as it pertains to one's own beliefs and feelings, informs the word's contemporary meaning.

Whereas hypokrisis applied to any sort of public performance (including the art of rhetoric), hypokrites was a technical term for a stage actor and was not considered an appropriate role for a public figure. In Athens in the 4th Century BC, for example, the great orator Demosthenes

Demosthenes

Demosthenes was a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by...

 ridiculed his rival Aeschines

Aeschines

Aeschines , Greek statesman and one of the ten Attic orators.-Life:Although it is known he was born in Athens, the records regarding his parentage and early life are conflicting; but it seems probable that his parents, though poor, were respectable. Aeschines' father was Atrometus, an elementary...

, who had been a successful actor before taking up politics, as a hypokrites whose skill at impersonating characters on stage made him an untrustworthy politician. This negative view of the hypokrites, perhaps combined with the Roman disdain for actors, later shaded into the originally neutral hypokrisis. It is this later sense of hypokrisis as "play-acting," i.e. the assumption of a counterfeit persona, that gives the modern word hypocrisy its negative connotation.

Common fallacies

• It is a common fallacy (see List of fallacies) to—in an ad hominem
  Ad hominem
  An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem is an argument which links the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of a person advocating the premise....
  
   attack—accuse someone of being a hypocrite in an attempt to invalidate their argument. In other words, just because someone is a hypocrite, that does not make them wrong.

• It is also common for children to employ this type of ad hominem
  Ad hominem
  An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem is an argument which links the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of a person advocating the premise....
  
   attack against their parents. For example, children may accuse their parents of hypocrisy if the parent admonishes them for using drugs or smoking, or warning them of the dangers of such activities, if the parent used them in the past.

• Notwithstanding, while hypocrisy does not refute truth, it is valid to hold that hypocrisy can place truth within a given context.

• A medical board that consists of smokers who refuse to hire a medical candidate on the grounds that the candidate is a smoker is guilty of inconsistent norms
  Norm (sociology)
  Social norms are the behavioral expectations and cues within a society or group. This sociological term has been defined as "the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors." These rules may be explicit or implicit...
  
  , but not necessarily hypocrisy. In this case a norm has been established that smokers can become doctors.

For example, the fact that a doctor smokes doesn't make that doctor wrong when they advise a patient that smoking is dangerous. Also, a doctor who truly believes smoking is dangerous yet smokes is not a hypocrite simply for practicing dangerous behavior. Instead, to accurately label as hypocrite a smoking doctor who advises patients that smoking is dangerous, the doctor would have to actually believe smoking is not dangerous.

Hypocrisy and vice

Although hypocrisy has been called "the tribute that vice pays to virtue," and a bit of it certainly greases the wheels of social exchange, it may also corrode the well-being of those people who are continually forced to make use of it. As Boris Pasternak has Yurii say in Doctor Zhivago

Doctor Zhivago

-Original creation:*Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak, published in 1957**Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago, a fictional character and the main protagonist of the book Doctor Zhivago-Adaptations:There are several adaptations based on the Doctor Zhivago book:...

, "Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike... Our nervous system isn't just fiction, it's part of our physical body, and it can't be forever violated with impunity."

See also

• Tu quoque
  Tu quoque
  Tu quoque is a Latin term that describes a kind of logical fallacy. A tu quoque argument attempts to discredit the opponent's position by asserting his failure to act consistently in accordance with that position; it attempts to show that a criticism or objection applies equally to the person...
  
  
• Moral absolutism
  Moral absolutism
  Moral absolutism is the meta-ethical view that certain actions are absolutely right or wrong, devoid of the context of the act. Thus lying, for instance, might be considered to be always immoral, even if done to promote some other good...
  
  
• Moral relativism
  Moral relativism
  In philosophy moral relativism is the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect universal moral truths . Instead, Moral Relativism makes claims relative to social, cultural, or historical circumstances. Moral relativists hold that no universal standard exists by which to assess an...
  
  
• Pot calling the kettle black
  Pot calling the kettle black
  The phrase "The pot calling the kettle black" is an idiom used to accuse a person or thing of being marked with or guilty of the very thing they are pointing out; in this interpretation, it is shown that there is something shared. This may, or may not be hypocritical or contradictory...
  
  
• Champagne socialist
  Champagne socialist
  A "champagne socialist" is a pejorative political term originating in the United Kingdom. The phrase is used to describe a Labour Party politician, or other Socialist self-proclaimed advocate of the poor or working classes, who claims to support a form of socialist ideology, but who might disregard...
  
  
• Discourse on Judgementalism
  Discourse on judgementalism
  The discourse on judgmentalism was a portion of the Sermon on the Mount given by Jesus, according to the Gospel of Matthew. It directly followed the discourse on ostentation. The discourse is fairly brief, and begins by condemning those who would judge others, arguing that they too would be judged...
  
  
• Tartuffe (play by Molière)
  Tartuffe
  Tartuffe is a comedy by Molière. It is his most famous play.As the play begins, the well-off Orgon is convinced that Tartuffe is a man of great religious zeal and fervor. In fact, Tartuffe is a scheming hypocrite...