Well, the world here at Westminster Place is getting grimmer and more desperate by the second, so I’m escaping to my office for a nonce to see if a break helps. As it happens, our old friend “The Ethicist,” Kwame Anthony Appiah, had a recent exchange involving death-related matters, and I didn’t care much for his analysis.

But what do I know? I couldn’t even figure out that my wife needed to go to the hospital regardless of what her protestations when in fact she was dying…

But I digress. A questioner asked the Times Magazine’s resident ethics advice columnist (and the fourth to hold The Ethicist title) whether his plan of “giving half of my inheritance to my brother without telling him of his exclusion from [their father’s] will, sparing him any additional hurt feelings,” would be ethical. Mad Dad is 90, the inquiring son is the executor of the father’s will, and he has seen that his brother has been cut out..

His question concludes, “Would this be ethical, or does the need for truth override my plan? To be clear, I would not lie. This would be more a misdirection by omission.”

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