About lying in politics

 I believe, in fact, that the lie paradigm is not the best instrument to analyze what happens today in political discourse. A sociologist needs more subtle instruments. However, I recognize that this should not force us to abandon the reference to lies, to forget the difference between lying speech and truthful speech, because the clue lies in knowing how to delimit the political. For Hannah Arendt there is a history of lying: in «premodern» societies, in certain ways, lying was linked to politics in a conventionally accepted way in terms of diplomacy, reason of state, etc., but was limited to a limited field of politics by contract. The modern mutation of the lie, and Hannah Arendt analyzes this phenomenon of modernity following the huellas of Koyré, that is, those limits do not exist, that the lie has reached a kind of uncontrollable absolute. Through an analysis of totalitarianism linked to mass media communication, In the structure of this communication of information and propaganda instruments, with eyes fixed on this modern mutation, Hannah Arendt declares that the modern political lie has no limits, that it is not circumscribed. It is worth asking whether the concept of lying continues to be adequate, whether it is sufficiently powerful for the analysis of this modernity. The difficulty faced by any citizen of a democracy is, at the same time, maintaining an unconditional reference for the distinction between lies and truth, therefore, maintaining the old concept, without at the same time depriving himself of more subtle instruments to analyze the current situation reinforced by political marketing, rhetoric, and the award of the papers that exist what to perform, etc.

Usted remembers that, when Hannah Arendt intends to delimit the political order, she establishes two barriers: the legal and the university. Now, the articulation of the legal and the university has a relevance in the Papon trial that took place in Bordeaux, since some have questioned the incompatibility of historical testimony with the questioning of criminal proceedings. In other words, can the time of history be aligned with the time of law to make lies disappear?

About lie in politicWhen Hannah Arendt recalls that, contrary to an Aristotelian tradition, man is not absolutely political from top to bottom and that there are areas of his responsibility that transcend the political, she effectively names law and the university. Law can, beyond politics, summon those involved, witnesses, historians, archivists, to bring to light the truth that the political machine tends to conceal. Naturally, this can produce a series of perversions, and we are all familiar with the great debate currently raging around the power of judges. Hannah Arendt refers in any case, while saying that political lies no longer know limits, to a beyond the political from which lies could be denounced.