Politics of Truth

Truth seems to be in short supply in politics: it is not truth and facts but lies, disinformation, and conspiracy theories that dominate political discourse. According to this diagnosis, we find ourselves in a post-truth age in which established knowledge and scientific findings are being replaced by felt truths and alternative facts. This view is countered by the observation that no political movement can dispense with truth claims. While populist groups invoke the courage of the truth and claim that the truth is on their side, ecological movements such as Extinction Rebellion or Fridays for Future mobilise with slogans like Tell the Truth! or Unite Behind the Science! Political philosophy and theory have so far paid little attention to the ambivalent relationship between truth and politics. Instead, they tend to exclude truth from politics and relegate the associated questions to other disciplines such as epistemology, moral philosophy, or social philosophy. The research project Politics of Truth addresses this issue by rethinking truth as a genuinely political concept that cannot be reduced to epistemological, moral, or power-related questions. The central thesis is that social crises and conflicts affect not only the political sphere but also a societys regime of truth, thereby putting pressure on previously accepted norms, practices, and institutions. From this perspective, the issues discussed under the heading post-truth such as the crisis of democracy, the rise of populism, the fragmentation of the public sphere, or attacks on science are not separate phenomena but rather symptoms of a fundamental crisis of the current regime of truth. However, this crisis is not new; rather, it can be traced back to the crisis of liberalism in the early 20th century, to which socialist, fascist, and neoliberal movements each responded in different ways. The project thus pursues three objectives: 1. to analyse the complex relationship between truth and politics from a historical and systematic perspective; 2. to genealogically reconstruct the crisis of the current regime of truth; 3. to develop a truth-political theory that is capable of adequately describing and critically evaluating contemporary political phenomena.