The Force of Truth: Critique, Genealogy, and Truth-Telling in Michel Foucault [Hardcover]

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

Many blame Michel Foucault for our post-truth and conspiracy-laden society. In this provocative work, Daniele Lorenzini argues that such criticism fundamentally misunderstands the philosopher’s project. 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 to articulate a new ethics and politics of truth-telling precisely in order to evade the threat of relativism.The Force of Truthexplores this neglected dimension of Foucault’s project by putting his writings on regimes of truth andparrhesiain conversation with early analytic philosophy and by drawing out the “possibilizing” elements of Foucault’s genealogies that remain vital for practicing critique today.Daniele Lorenziniis associate professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and a prolific editor of Michel Foucault’s works, most recentlyMadness, Language, Literature, also published by the University of Chicago Press.Introduction: Writing the History of Truth
A History of Truth That Does Not Rely on “the Truth”
Toward an Ethics and Politics of Truth-Telling
The Force of Words and the Force of Truth
1. Truth-Event
“A Little History of Truth in General”
The Emergence of the Alethurgic Subject
Confessional Sciences
2. Regimes of Truth
Truth Obligations?
Games and Regimes of Truth
A Critical (An)archaeology
Language Games and Games of Truth
The Value of Truth
Regimes of Truth and Spirituality
3. Truth as Force
Cavell, Austin, and the Perlocutionary
Parrhesiaas Speech Act
Unpredictability, Freedom, and Criticism
Risk and Courage
Transparency, or