Monday, November 6, 2023
Daniele Lorenzini, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences discussing:
The Force of Truth: Critique, Genealogy, and Truth-Telling in Michel Foucault
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 Truth explores this neglected dimension of Foucault’s 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 Foucault’s genealogies that remain vital for practicing critique today.
All Events Take Place at the Penn Bookstore:
- 3601 Walnut St., 19104, Second Floor