François Noudelmann, who has been teaching in American universities for twenty-five years, is struck by the new practice of lying in politics, and particularly since the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Untruths are disseminated as “alternative facts”: to each his own interpretation. We’ve entered the era of post-truths, opening the door to fake news and the crudest manipulations.
The aim of this essay is to retrace the path that has led to this relativism over the last forty years: the reign of storytelling, the empire of emotion, identity politics, victim ideology, cancel culture, philosophical deconstruction, autofiction and exofiction, the virtualization of the world by artificial intelligence… have all demolished Western reason.
To save the truth and the positivity of facts, François Noudelmann explores in this essay other particularly instructive and innovative avenues, such as indignation in the face of lies, and the alliance of doubt and revolt, which allow us to still believe in a common language.
François Noudelmann lives in New York. He is Professor of Philosophy and Literature at New York University. A former president of the Collège international de philosophie, he is the author of numerous essays, translated into a dozen languages. His books include Le toucher des philosophes. Sartre, Nietzsche et Barthes au piano (Gallimard, 2008, grand prix des Muses 2009), Les airs de famille ; une philosophie des affinités (Gallimard, 2012), Penser avec les oreilles (Max Milo, 2019), Un tout autre Sartre (Gallimard, 2020), The Genius of Lies (Max Milo, 2024).
