OF BLIND MEN AND ELEPHANTS: SEEKING TRUTH IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD

Abstract

It seems that a deficit of truth is characteristic of our politics today. To be clear, few people with even the briefest sense of politics and its processes would claim that the relationship between truth and politics has ever been a harmonious one. At first glance, post-truth—which we can take (for now) as the irrelevance of facts in public discourse—does not seem to be very different. Yet if post-truth is just the preponderance of lies in politics, do we actually need to be that concerned with it? I argue that post-truth goes beyond the use of deception in politics and, instead, belies a conundrum over the concept of truth which has significant implications for political deliberation as a whole. A solution to post-truth must first resolve this conundrum. My argument proceeds in four sections. First, I explore the ‘post-truth’ phenomenon, identifying some ways in which it overlaps or is distinct from other concepts that it tends to be conflated with. This, as I will demonstrate, leads us to consider the elusive but compulsive nature of Truth—that though much of what we take for granted turns out to be far from certain, we cannot avoid truth-claims in politics. In this way, any attempts to do away with truth-talk in politics is a misstep that hurts our political processes rather than helps it. Rather, the present quandary signals a need to find a conception of political truth that is independent of the thicker, metaphysical Truth and to renew our understanding of how one can pursue it. In particular, I explore the potential for democratic reason to form a minimal, political conception and provide the needed solution. Finally, I conclude by exploring some of the ramifications of embracing this proposed conception of political truth and a few preliminary suggestions for how we might move forward rather than backward in our search for truth in this ‘post-truth’ world.