 Kant over-simplifies the moral life in a number of ways. Ross thinks the clearest case of oversimplification is Kant’s commitment to exceptionless moral principles (RG 18–19; FE 313, 134, 173; KT 24, 95). Kant maintains lying is always wrong (Kant 1785, 1797). It cannot, he says, serve as a universal law that one may lie to avoid some difficulty or harm (either to oneself or to another). As soon as lying in such cases is such a law it is impossible to benefit by lying, for everyone will be wise to the fact people lie in such cases. Ross disagrees. In line with common sense, he thinks it is permissible to lie in some contexts (RG 28), e.g., when the (net) benefit of lying significantly outweighs the cost as would be true of a case in which one lies to prevent a friend from being killed by a would-be murderer inquiring about one’s friend’s whereabouts (KT 31–32; for Kant’s discussion of the case of the inquiring murderer, see Kant 1797). Ross holds the oversimplification results in part from Kant thinking ‘the rightness or wrongness of an individual act can be inferred with certainty from its falling or not falling under a rule capable of being universalised’ (FE 189; also KT 25). Kant’s abstract way of ethical reasoning involves neglecting factors relevant to figuring out what we should do (KT 33–34; FE 189).