Hypocrisy is a moral failing we find in deceitful, duplicitous people. But this word—which originally comes from a Greek verb that simply means "to reply"—wasn't always associated with deception or compromised principles. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus and the novelist George Eliot give us literary examples to consider how our notion of hypocrisy came to us today.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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