With the rise of social media and populist leaders like Trump who have undermined the authority of facts in politics, many say we’re living in a “post-truth” era. In On Truth in Politics, Michael Patrick Lynch explores different philosophical interpretations of truth – from Plato to Dewey to Rawls – in the context of contemporary democratic politics. He offers us a timely and thoughtful argument for why truth is essential to democracy, writes Jeff Roquen.
What is truth? Is it a fixed idea of knowledge available to all individuals? Is truth objective, or is it socially constructed? Is it necessary to democratic politics? In the recent monograph On Truth in Politics: Why Democracy Demands It (2025), American philosopher Michael Patrick Lynch considers these lofty questions and attempts to define and rehabilitate the concept of truth in modern political philosophy.
The book arrives at a critical juncture in modern American history. Since the election of a convicted felon for a second term in office, President Trump has exploited the power of the presidency to extinguish truth for the purpose of expanding executive power in a bid to replace the republic with an authoritarian regime by deceitfully casting the 6 January 2021 insurrectionists as victims of state power rather than violent insurrectionists with the aim of overturning the 2020 presidential election, smearing judges who rule against the administration as “crooked” or “radical left lunatic(s)”, perniciously depicting all undocumented immigrants as criminals and fabricating the existence of a riot in Los Angeles to stifle dissent with heavy-handed Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) raids on immigrants in the city.
Dewey’s pragmatism versus today’s partisanship
The author begins by lauding the eminent American philosopher John Dewey as the founding champion of truth in politics and endorses his philosophical paradigm of “pragmatism” – whereby humanistic, scientific and creative education…should be the central goal of any democracy” (xii, 14). An “epistemic infrastructure” in which stated political premises and judgements receive a thorough vetting for accuracy and cogency now seems remote and even quaint. Today, political partisans project views on social media in line with their respective political tribes or, quite often, take views in opposition to another political faction, with little regard for truth or accuracy. According to Lynch, “Twitbookians” neither “speak truth to power” nor “exercise their epistemic agency” (16-17). Rather than considering all ascertainable facts and perspectives, Twitbookians viscerally bolster their causes without accountability to facts or the often-subtle complexities of truth.
Making sensationalist and unnuanced political judgments that demonise political opponents to win influence and followers through social media has become the norm.
In Chapter Two “The Many Uses of Political Judgment” and Chapter Three “Can Truth Be a Democratic Value”, Lynch defines political truth as “a constitutive norm of belief” and posits that “only beliefs are governed by truth” (37, 41). Yet, making sensationalist and unnuanced political judgments that demonise political opponents to win influence and followers through social media has become the norm. When politics devolves to a base level guided by passion, resentment and false dichotomies, democracy wanes. Where, then, is truth, and can or should it have a functional role in politics?
Plato, Rawls and Arendt on the meaning of truth
After briefly discussing and dismissing the ancient Greek view of Plato that “’ those who know should rule,’” Lynch resurrects the oft-debated, somewhat opaque writings of twentieth-century political philosopher John Rawls (especially his 1971 volume A Theory of Justice). For Rawls, a standard of “reasonableness” of thought and judgment should guide politics rather than truth per se. Yet, is acknowledging truth not a constitutive element of “reasonableness”? Lynch argues that it is, and he also rejects the dichotomy of factual and rational truth as espoused by Hannah Arendt – the author of seminal study The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Under the subheading “Truth as a Democratic Value”, the author frames the question as being “whether societies engaging in democratic politics have a reason…to encourage and promote believing what’s true as such” (66-78).
Theories of truth from Habermas to Rorty
In response to the “consensus theory of truth” developed by German social theorist Jurgen Habermas, Lynch questions the relationship of consensus to both truth and politics and again endorses the philosophical pragmatist approach by quoting Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) in his assertion “The point is that true opinions are those that would survive the fires of experience.” (112-119). Hence, measurable realities eclipse theory in defining and ultimately arriving at truth.
How can a democratic society prevent one party from wilfully denying or suppressing truth to take and maintain power?
In Chapter Five “Truth as Normative: From Quietism to Pluralism” and Chapter Six “Political Truth as Concordance,” Lynch refutes the notion that truth neither possesses a functional value nor a role in political theory – as maintained by pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty and metaphysical “deflationists” and “quietists” by asserting that truth significantly factors into both norms and beliefs. In engaging in critical thought to arrive at a correct belief or a “good” for society, truth cannot be absent in any political, intellectual equation. (129-140). For a political proposition to achieve validity, it should be expected to attain “supercoherence” and ultimately “concordance” with related logical ideas, experiences and evidence both inside and outside the realm of politics. By comparison to the often non-cogent diatribes of Twitbookians, democratic politics requires a structured, measurable and rational discourse with rigorous standards (170-184). Ultimately, Lynch condemns “intellectual arrogance,” asks for a return to humility to thwart/end “epistemic corruption” and to consider the merits of his truth-infused pragmatism as a model for democratic politics (203-208).
Defending the case for truth in democracy
As the US now straddles the line between democracy and autocracy (as argued by former President Barack Obama), Lynch has provided a timely and thoughtful re-examination of the role of truth as a vital component in democratic practice. Hopefully, it will spark a debate on overdue repairs to the intellectual architecture of American politics. His admirable study, however, seems to raise an even larger question. How can a democratic society prevent one party from wilfully denying or suppressing truth to take and maintain power? And if a political faction can wilfully dissolve truth, should this not also reignite debate on the instrumental role of ethics in government?
In his landmark work After Virtue (1981), the late Scottish-American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre decried the emergence of “value neutrality” and moral relativism devoid of a shared vision of “the good” – and declared a “new dark ages [were] already upon us.” As many of the core ethical and political principles of democratic society (from tolerance of dissent to government accountability) are flagrantly flouted under Trump’s presidency, history appears to have proved MacIntyre right, and the survival of both truth and democracy in the US now hangs in the balance.
Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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