Rethinking Post-Truth Politics with Arendt and Foucault

Many academics, journalists and politicians have decried that we live in a post-truth era. Factual truth is no longer important in shaping people’s beliefs. Rather, emotive appeals and expressive responding dominate the political landscape. Furthermore, policy making is increasingly informed not by evidence, but by appeals to common sense. This anti-technocratic push is well reflected in the aim of the Trump Administration to restore common sense with regard to gender and food policies. Closer to home, Hungarian president Orbán laments te removal of common sense from politics. There are roughly two dominant academic responses to the post-truth condition. On the one hand, there are accounts of truth-based solutionism (Farkas & Schou 2024). This entails the idea that political problems are best resolved through evidence-based policy making. We need more respect for factual truth, more objectivity and more rationality to reclaim a golden age of truth once more. The way to achieve this is through fact-checking, inoculation and improving media-literacy. On the other hand, academics have welcomed post-truth as a form of emancipatory politics shaking up power structures and redefining the game of what truth itself means (Fuller 2018). I will argue that both are inadequate because they rely on an insufficient understanding of the role of factual truth in politics. Based on the works of political Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault I aim to carve out a more complete theory of truth in politics. Arendt acknowledges the importance of respect for factual truth as facts ‘constitute the very texture of the political realm’. Yet, she equally warns us for the ‘despotic force’ of factual truth (Arendt 2006). Factual truth shuts down further debate, where debate is the essence of political life. Politics at heart is a world-building practice, in which we create and sustain a space of appearance in which facts acquire their meaning. Without this common world, propagating factual truths would be not incorrect but senseless. Arendt shows us that creating this common world requires a continuous effort. Factual truth alone does not inspire to political action (praxis), but needs to be taken up in words and deeds that aim to create a world in common. Truth based solutionism misses this point. Foucault on the other hand shows us that factual truths can shape the way we think, speak and live. Whilst epistemic criteria of correctness determine whether a statement is true, a regime of truth subsequently determines what obligations we have with regards to truth. Foucault’s separation of correctness (‘it is true’) and obligation (‘I submit to the truth’) serves to explain why so many obvious truths (e.g. Trump’s inauguration claim) are so easily disregarded (Lorenzini 2023; Zerilli 2025). Based on Arendt and Foucault, I will argue that we do not need more facts, evidence or objectivity. Rather, we need to shift our attention to the conditions of possibility of factual truth in democratic politics, which are care for the world in Arendt and regimes of truth in Foucault.