"Lying is the mother tongue of our reason and wit," it says in a letter from Hamann to Kant. The lie is not entirely other or incomprehensible in relation to the truth, but is inseparably connected to it: It is not a statement that can be assigned the truth values 'true' or 'false', but rather a communicative, productive act undertaken with the intention to deceive, thereby aiming to create a new emotive and cognitive reality. Vladimir Jankélévitch, in "On Lying," directs attention to the inner mental state of the person who 'decides' to lie and attempts to trace the 'subjective side' of the lie. Our consciousness seeks to handle the polymorphic, the ambiguous, the unacknowledged, and invents something credible and pragmatic. The lie is "the cunning of the weak," a saving idea in situations of self-defense.