Philosophy, politics and truth

Abstract

The history of the relationship between philosophy, politics and truth is of a controversial disposition. This is witnessed by the opening scene of philosophy, where the discourse of truth confronts the truth of politics: Socrates condemned to death. That event founded a tradition of thought that has since then placed an ambivalence with respect to politics: the truth will sometimes function as support for the function of government; while in another, as the ethics of a true statement regarding power. In other words, it will operate as a true discourse of politics, or as the parrhesiastic exercise of confronting power with the courage of truth.
Despite this, both attitudes show us the co-existence between philosophy and politics, not because of the specific content of the truth put into play, but because of its functioning, its articulations, because of what it mobilizes or circulates – as every regime of truth commits to individuals in their decisions and forms of obedience. In this light, truth will always be a position of strength. An interpretation that exhibits effects of power and a power that produces discourses of truth. It is around a line of forces, which threads subjection and dissubjection, that a politics of truth could lead towards the increase or decrease of degrees of freedom, when what is at stake is the possibility of constituting ourselves as subjects.