Immanuel Kant maintains that lying is always impermissible, since moral norms are categorical imperatives that admit of no exceptions. Yet this strict position conflicts with a widely shared intuition that lying may be permissible in certain exceptional cases. This article develops a revisionary Kantian proposal that accommodates this intuition while preserving the categorical character of moral norms. Central to this proposal is a default-and-exemption account of moral responsibility: The prohibition on lying applies universally, making agents morally responsible by default. This default condition, however, may be overridden if justifiable reasons for exemption exist.
