FOUCAULT FOR OUR TIMES
Philosophers are always asking, “What is knowledge?” or “What is truth?” However, Foucault further asserts that “since Nietzsche the question of truth” is no longer “‘What is the surest path to Truth?’ but ‘What is the hazardous career that Truth has followed?’… What is the history of this ‘will to truth’? ‘What are its effects?’‘How is this all interwoven with relations of power?’” He asks, “How is it that, in our societies, ‘the truth’ has been given this value, thus placing us absolutely under its thrall?” In other words, by identifying with Nietzsche, Foucault claims that the problem of truth and knowledge is how actors use truth claims. When we start describing ourselves as part of a group of people united in a “we”, while other people are constructed as fundamentally different, united in a “they”, we are using a powerful weapon that might serve to delegitimize others. According to Michel Foucault, othering is strongly connected with power and knowledge. When we “...
