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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.
| 21248 | If the existence of truth is denied, the 'Truth does not exist' must be true! [Aquinas] |
| 4508 | The truth is what gives us the minimum of spiritual effort, and avoids the exhaustion of lying [Nietzsche] |
| 18986 | Truth is just a name for verification-processes [James] |
| 15569 | Heidegger says truth is historical, and never absolute [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| 19636 | Truth is just an error insufficiently experienced [Cioran] |
| 19642 | Eventually every 'truth' is guaranteed by the police [Cioran] |
| 15042 | Truth doesn't arise from solitary freedom, but from societies with constraints [Foucault] |
| 4756 | Derrida says that all truth-talk is merely metaphor [Derrida, by Engel] |
| 21877 | True thoughts are inaccessible, in the subconscious, prior to speech or writing [Derrida] |
| 4726 | Rorty seems to view truth as simply being able to hold one's view against all comers [Rorty, by O'Grady] |
| 10820 | In the early 1930s many philosophers thought truth was not scientific [Field,H] |