Honesty VS Truthfulness (Are they the same?)

Recently I was talking to someone and they made the comment to me that they were an honest person. This got me thinking hard about what honesty actually is. Is it the same as being truthful or is there more to it than that? I’ll let you make that determination for your own self.

In order to compare the two we first need to learn the proper definition of each. According to Oxfords dictionary the definition of honesty is: “The quality of being honest.” The original sense of the word being “honor, virtue, respectability.” The definition of truthfulness is “telling or expressing the truth” along with “being honest.”

Let’s dig a little deeper. The definition of “honest” in and of itself is “to be free of untruthfulness.” Whereas the definition of truth is "the quality or state of being true.” Both of these words are very similar and clearly go hand and hand. However, they are not the exact same thing.

You can be honest without being truthful, but you cannot be truthful without being honest. Honesty is a hyponym of truthful, whereas truthful is a hypernym of honesty. This is where things get tricky. My dear friend Austin said it best, “Honesty means not lying, while being truthful is more active and requires that the truth be told (whereas honesty is basically refusing to lie, but does not require that the whole truth be disclosed.)”

If you choose not to tell someone something, because they did not ask you directly… you are not lying. You are still being honest. You are just choosing to leave something out. But that is not the same as being truthful. If you know that part of the story is pertinent… if you are aware that part of the story will have an impact and you willfully leave it out because they did not ask? You are not being truthful. And I think it’s important that we distinguish and acknowledge that.

So many times people will get in to verbal altercations because one party is accusing the other of lying. But is it lying if you leave a part of the story out? That’s a personal distinction that you have to make yourself. In my opinion if you leave it out and it’s pertinent… then you are lying by omission. Maybe you are being honest… but you are not being truthful.

I don’t want to hear the phrase “honesty is the best policy” anymore. I want truthfulness. I want an active “I will tell you ALL the things because I care about you and you deserve the truth.” I want “you may not need to know this part (or you may not like this part), but I don’t want to leave it out because I want to be truthful with you.”

Honesty is great and all… but... Just me with the cold, hard truth.