The Force of Truth

A groundbreaking examination of Michel Foucault’s history of truth.

Many blame Michel Foucault for our post-truth and conspiracy-laden society, but Daniele Lorenzini argues that such criticism misunderstands the philosopher’s work: Foucault did not question truth itself but what Lorenzini calls “the force of truth,” or how some truth claims are given the power to govern our con...

A groundbreaking examination of Michel Foucault’s history of truth.

Many blame Michel Foucault for our post-truth and conspiracy-laden society, but Daniele Lorenzini argues that such criticism misunderstands the philosopher’s work: Foucault did not question truth itself but what Lorenzini calls “the force of truth,” or how some truth claims are given the power to govern our conduct while others are not. This interest, Lorenzini shows, drove Foucault not to attack truth but to articulate a new ethics and politics of truth-telling. The Force of Truth explores this dimension of Foucault’s work by putting his writings on regimes of truth and parrhesia in conversation with early analytic philosophy and by drawing out the “possibilizing” elements of Foucault’s genealogies that remain vital for practicing critique today.

Daniele Lorenzini is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania.