The latest installment of the Times Magazine advice column “The Ethicist” includes Prof. Appiah’s responses to two inquiries involving people, as they used to say, “sticking their noses into other people’s business” and revealing secret that could have a devastating emotional and practical impact on the party being enlightened. This issue comes up in the column frequently, and it has been discussed in Ethics Alarms as well, often under the categories “the duty to warn,” “the duty to fix the problem,” and most of all, “The Golden Rule.” Oddly, the latter provides the easiest and clearest route to both of the answers Appiah provides in the column, and yet he doesn’t mention it or allude to it anywhere.

I find that strange.

The first inquiry involves a man who discovered that his older brother was adopted but still doesn’t know it. His elderly parents, “not long for this world,” still adamantly refuse to tell him. “Do I have any obligation to tell my brother what I have learned about his life so he can learn more?,” asks “Name Withheld.”

The Ethicist then devotes about 400 words to giving an obvious and unavoidable answer that could have been expressed in three: “Of course you do!” Why? Well, wouldn’t you want to know the truth of your origins? It’s the Golden Rule, baby! Come on! This isn’t hard.

Instead, Appiah, who is a competent ethicist and a real one unlike his four predecessors, pads and mucks up his answer with rationalizations and irrelevancies, like:

• “Your parents surely made this decision out of love for your brother.”  So what? Their motives are irrelevant.

• “They must have thought he would be better off if he believed that he was their biological child.”  Again: their thoughts are irrelevant to the brother’s needs and human rights. 

• “Yet there’s a very strong reason for telling him now. Only now will he have the opportunity to gain insight into your parents’ decision and to let them know how he feels about it. Not telling him until your parents are gone will deprive him of that opportunity, at the cost of saving them some discomfort. You cannot resolve your issues with the dead.” Every second that the brother withholds the secret makes him an accessory to a deception and a breach of trust.

• “Yes, your parents’ preferences count against telling him…” No, they really don’t. It’s the brother’s life and the brother’s history. Parents often do this to spare an adopted child anxiety, but the only reason they keep the secret after the child is grown is to avoid resentment and anger.

• “If they still won’t tell him after they’ve had time to think about it, and they have no genuinely persuasive reason to justify their reticence, you should let them know you’ll be letting him know.” Wait, what?? “After they’ve had time to think about it”!? The parents have had their son’s whole life to think about it!

• “In our era of online genetic ancestries, there’s a good chance the truth will come out anyway.” So if there was no chance the secret would come out, that would mitigate the brother’s obligation?

“The Ethicist” doesn’t advance the cause of ethical literacy and decision-making by muddying the issues like this.

In the second telling secrets question, the writer asked if her daughter did the right thing to inform their housekeeper that what she thought was a serious online romantic relationship with an American soldier overseas was really a popular scam, and that she had been sending money to a fake beau who was bilking her. How ethically clueless does someone have to be to have to ask a question like this? The inquirer:

I wondered if I should warn her now and break her heart, or let it go and later see her brokenhearted and deep in debt. I discussed this quandary with my daughter, who said, “You have to tell her, and if you can’t, I will.” So my daughter did…Was my daughter right in telling this woman the bitter truth?

Gee, I dunno…would YOU want to be told if someone you thought was the love of your life was just interested in defrauding you out of your money? Tough one! In an amusing note, the writer made it clear what her real concern was, by adding, “Will she hate me and leave my employment?”

Good housekeepers are hard to find!