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. In this provocative work, Daniele Lorenzini argues that such criticism fundamentally misunderstands the philosophers 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 Truth explores this neglected dimension of Foucaults project by putting his writings on regimes of truth and parrhesia in conversation with early analytic philosophy and by drawing out the possibilizing elements of Foucaults genealogies that remain vital for practicing critique today.