Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
2019
Abstract
This essay addresses the problem of truth today in light of the common belief, especially among progressives, that we have entered a post-truth age, as well as of the frequent claim that our post-truth society is the fault of postmodernists and their challenge to the objectivity of truth. The essay does not resolve the strategic question whether the post-truth argument is, as a purely tactical political matter, an effective approach to respond to the onslaught of misrepresentations and lies by President Donald Trump and the New Right. Instead, it explores the post-truth argument from a more synoptic perspective regarding the age-old questions surrounding truth and illusions.
Disciplines
Law | Law and Politics | Public Law and Legal Theory
Recommended Citation
Bernard E. Harcourt,
The Last Refuge of Scoundrels: The Problem of Truth in a Time of Lying,
Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 14-628
(2019).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2520
Comments
Paper prepared for NOMOS and presented at the 2019 conference of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy on “Truth and Evidence” at Princeton University on Friday, September 27, 2019.