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An Analysis of Michel Foucault’s Conception of Truth

Pamela Ann N. Jose

Discipline: Philosophy, Faith

 

Abstract:

Richard Rorty claims that philosophy can either be seen as a practice whose primary goal is to show the interrelationship between the different practices in our society or as a discipline whose main aim is to discover the essence of the objects we posit as well as the normative concepts we employ in different discourses. Michel Foucault’s works have usually been associated with the initial characterization of philosophy mentioned above. However, in what follows, I demonstrate how Foucault’s general theme, what he dubs “the discourse of true and false,” intersects with the view that philosophy is the search for the nature of the normative notions we employ in different discourses. In a similar manner, I demonstrate how Foucault’s conception of truth conforms to minimalism’s schema for truth. Though his theme’s intersection with the characterization of philosophy as the search for universal categories and essences is in line with his criticism of how discourses dictate the ways of constituting, seeing and compartmentalizing an object, the manner in which his conception of truth conforms to minimalism’s schema for truth leads to a paradoxical situation for his conception of truth may also be seen as a byproduct of a discourse about truth itself.