Speak your mind, always. Hypocrisy challenges this rule of authenticity, and for this very reason hypocrisy is judged negatively, as intentional inconsistency between thoughts and words, between belief and behaviour. Does this make the hypocrite a silent saboteur of the moral order? A person who hides in the shadows and erodes the foundations of trust? Without trust there is no society, nor friendship, nor love. But society, friendship and love also require a measure of “virtuous” hypocrisy. If we were always robustly honest in public, it would be a disaster for everyone. What about politics? Here, too, are hypocrisy, inconsistency, and exchange always reprehensible? Or are they the essence of any democracy, any assembly, any meeting? The important thing is to understand when and within what limits hypocrisy can be justified and, above all, what is the opposite of hypocrisy.

Nadia Urbinati teaches Political Theory at Columbia University in New York.

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