Truls Ljungström’s Reviews > Truth and Politics > Status Update

No opinion is self-evident. In matters of opinion, but not in matters of truth, our thinking is truly discursive, running, as it were, from place to place, from one part of the world to another, through all kinds of conflicting views, until it finally ascends from these particularities to some impartial generality.

The Platonic conflict between truthteller and citizens cannot be explained by the Latin adage, or any of the later theories that, implicitly or explicitly, justify lying, among other transgressions, if the survival of the city is at stake.

What lends this commonplace its high plausibility can still be summed up in the old Latin adage “Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus” (“Let justice be done though the world may perish”) [. . .] and if we put truth in its place – “Fiat veritas, et pereat mundus” – the old saying sounds even more plausible. [. . .] it will therefore come as something of a surprise that the sacrifice of truth for the survival of the worl/.

No one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other, and no one, as far as I know, has ever counted truthfulness among the political virtues. Lies have always been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools not only of the politician’s or the demagogue’s but also of the statesman’s trade.
Why is that so?