The Invention of Lying

What does this 2009 comedy tell us about lying? Is the world presented, a world where lying does not exist until the main character, Mark Bellison, ‘invents’ it, a world that is worth living in? Why? What assumptions are made, in this film, about how people would treat each other in a world where lying does not exist? How does the premise of the film reflect thought experiments that Immanuel Kant relies upon when explaining his notion of ‘the categorical imperative’? How does the film treat Mark’s invention of religion, and claims of an afterlife? Does it reflect producer/writer Ricky Gervais’s cynicism with regard to religion, or does he portray his sympathy with its conciliatory power, through the story of Mark and his mother at her death-bed? Does the film also ‘argue’ for the conciliatory power of lying, more generally? How does he deal with white lies? What is the connection between lying, having capacity for imagination and conceiving of ‘what is not’ (as it is put in the film)? Would science be possible in a world like this?