Can we make truth great again?

Francois Noudelmann

Parution le 25/04/2025

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Résumé

Reassessing facts and truth while the distinction between true and false becomes blurred.

Since the election of Donald Trump, the practice of political lying has been exercised in the name of relativism. Untruths are disseminated as "alternative facts": to each his own interpretation. We have entered the age of post-truth. This open door to fake news and manipulation is part of a profound questioning of truth. The aim of this essay is to retrace the path that has led to this relativism over the last forty years or so: the reign of storytelling, the empire of emotion, identity politics, victim ideology, cancel culture, philosophical deconstruction, autofiction and exofiction, the virtualization of the world by artificial intelligence...
However, recourse to universal truth and the positivity of facts is no longer possible, as Western reason has suffered a critique
without return. So we have to think of other ways to save the idea of truth and the establishment of facts. Nostalgia for the great
heroic figures of Reason, from Socrates onwards, must not obscure the passion that nourishes the desire for truth. It is from these
affects that the demand for truth can be rekindled: resistance to untruths, the will to convince, the alliance of doubt and
indignation are the resources that enable us to still believe in truth.

François Noudelmann lives in New York. Professor of philosophy and literature at New York University, he directs La Maison Française. A former president of the Collège international de philosophie, he also produced philosophy programs for France-Culture for eleven years. Author of numerous essays, translated into a dozen languages.