Power, Truth, and Politics

Steven Lukes, Professor of Sociology at New York University

We are living in an unsettling time in the United States and elsewhere, one key feature of which is the embracing of a kind of ‘tribal epistemology’: the rejection within politics by significant segments of populations of institutional and norm-governed ways of transcending partisanship. In this lecture Steven Lukes will ask why this has come about by addressing the issues raised by two suggestions of Hannah Arendt: that it is ‘in the very essence of truth to be impotent and in the very essence of power to be deceitful’ and that ‘truth and politics are on very bad terms with each other.’

Steven Michael Lukes is the author of numerous books and articles about political and social theory. Currently he is a professor of sociology at New York University.

To view Steven Lukes’ full bio, click here.

A reception will follow the lecture.