Is It Still Wrong to Lie to Someone Seeking a Victim?

Suppose a friend is hiding in your home and someone intent on harming them arrives at the door and asks where they are. In his 1797 discussion of a supposed right to lie from benevolent motives, Kant still rejects lying. His point is not simply indifference to life. He argues that a deliberately false declaration damages the conditions of right on which people can jointly rely. Because we cannot control every consequence of a lie, an expected good result cannot by itself establish a right to tell it.

Consequentialism stresses the other side. If a false answer can prevent grave and imminent harm, insisting on truthfulness may assist the aggressor. Moral particularists can instead say that “lying is normally wrong” expresses a genuine but defeasible reason: an extreme context changes the force of that reason without showing that honesty never matters.

My judgement is that deceiving the questioner here is permissible and may be required to protect the intended victim. Someone trying to turn your answer into an instrument of harm has no ordinary claim to truthful assistance. Yet this does not mean that professed good intentions excuse any lie. We should still ask whether the danger is real and immediate, whether deception is necessary and proportionate, and whether refusal or seeking help offers a less deceptive alternative. The exception must be publicly defensible; once the danger passes, the ordinary duties supporting trust remain.

Sources:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/
https://iep.utm.edu/util-a-r/