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Full Idea
Truth isn't a reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint.
Gist of Idea
Truth doesn't arise from solitary freedom, but from societies with constraints
Source
Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.131)
Book Ref
Foucault,Michel: 'Essential Works 1954-1984 3: Power', ed/tr. Faubion,J [Penguin 2002], p.131
A Reaction
This obviously has a degree of truth in many areas of human belief, but I just don't buy it as an account of Newton's researches into optics, or Lavoisier's chemistry. Politics is more involved once big money is required.
| 15037 | Why does knowledge appear in sudden bursts, and not in a smooth continuous development? [Foucault] |
| 15038 | Structuralism systematically abstracted the event from sciences, and even from history [Foucault] |
| 15039 | History lacks 'meaning', but it can be analysed in terms of its struggles [Foucault] |
| 15040 | Marxists denounced power as class domination, but never analysed its mechanics [Foucault] |
| 15041 | Power doesn't just repress, but entices us with pleasure, artefacts, knowledge and discourse [Foucault] |
| 15042 | Truth doesn't arise from solitary freedom, but from societies with constraints [Foucault] |
| 15043 | Every society has a politics of truth, concerning its values, functions, prestige and mechanisms [Foucault] |
| 15044 | 'Truth' is the procedures for controlling which statements are acceptable [Foucault] |