Valeriia Shaliakhina reviews Michael Patrick Lynch’s On Truth in Politics: Why Democracy Demands It (Princeton University Press, 2025)
“Truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other,” Hannah Arendt once noted. By taking this thesis into account, the philosopher Michael Patrick Lynch takes this tension as the starting point of his new book On Truth in Politics, published in 2025 by Princeton University Press. Written against the backdrop of political polarization and a crisis of trust in knowledge, this work reflects the growing concerns about the erosion of truth in democratic politics. Public discourse is increasingly shaped by party commitments and political identity rather than rational discussion and a shared understanding of the facts. In this context, Lynch’s argument has its relevance, as he raises questions about the role of truth in a democratic society and explains why democracy requires not only freedom of speech, but also a shared respect for facts and knowledge.
As a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, Michael Patrick Lynch has worked questions of truth, democracy, ethics, and the epistemology of technology. His earlier books, including Know-it-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture and The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data, explored the intersection of political epistemology, the nature of public discourse, and the ethical dilemmas posed by AI and digital technologies.
Two interconnected sections constitute his arguments. The first one examines the political dimension of truth’s role in democracy. Then, he moves to examine the metaphysical questions surrounding the nature of truth in politics. Lynch’s point is blunt: the political and philosophical questions are inseparable and impossible to defend democracy without understanding truth itself.
Michael Patrick Lynch’s first argument begins with a thought experiment about the society of Twitbookians. Twitbookians obey a single rule: say only what allies will approve of and enemies will condemn. Twitbookians sincerely believe that they are following evidence and facts. Through this hypothetical community, the author draws an analogy with contemporary political communities, which he claims is indifferent to truth. Therefore, such a culture undermines democracy. The more our politics resembles the society of the Twitbookians, the less democratic it becomes.
“When truth is not valued in politics on the Right or the Left, when we allow ourselves to shrug it off, or ignore it, both of these crucial tasks become more difficult, even impossible. We stop speaking truth to power and instead speak power to power” (p. 4)
By using the concept of political meaning, the author explains why modern politics is becoming increasingly similar to Twitbookians. When someone shares a meme or endorses a slogan, that person is more likely just expressing loyalty to their group rather than truly believing in it. Lynch calls this performative politics, where people do not assert their opinion but merely show who they are and which community they belong to.
Social media has particularly facilitated the development of such politics. To argue this point, Lynch mentions American activist Chris Rufo, who used the term “critical race theory”, a concept that examines racism in legal and social structures. By detaching the term from its meaning, Rufo contributed to its transformation into a politically charged slogan. This example illustrates how political language becomes a signal of belonging, which is what makes performative politics so dangerous for democracy.
Lynch builds his argument around a running debate with philosophers who believed that truth is either unnecessary or dangerous for democracy. John Rawls believed that in a society with diverse worldviews, politics should be based not on truth, but on principles that all citizens can accept. Richard Rorty went even further. He believed it made no sense to spend time searching for answers to the philosophical question: what is truth? Instead, he argued that democracy itself creates a culture in which people naturally gravitate toward the truth. However, one could claim that Richard Rorty lived in an era before social media, AI, and politicians that provide “alternative facts”. Taking this context into account, Lynch argues that the world has changed, forcing us to reconsider Rorty’s optimism.
The second part asks what, in politics, can count as truth. Lynch frames this debate between two dead ends. On one side sits naïve realism, which treats political truths as facts waiting to be discovered, much like scientific data. On the other side lies radical constructivism, which treats as truth what the majority votes for. Lynch argues that both are flawed. Naïve realism ignores what society must do regarding justice, rights, and equality, since these all depend on human practices and values. As well, radical constructivism has its problems: if truth is merely what the majority votes for, then we lose the possibility of political critique.
Instead of choosing between these extremes, Lynch proposes a different approach to define truth. He turns to Charles Sanders Peirce’s concept of concordance, which states that true statements are those that stand the test of experience, are consistent with logic, and do not contradict empirical facts. From here, Lynch shifts this idea to politics. A political statement can be considered true if it is a vision of social life that is internally consistent and aligns with facts outside of politics, such as climate, disease, and human well-being.
“Political truth is truth, and political reality is reality — politics can get you killed, after all, and nothing is more real than that. But it is a mistake to think that our political judgments are true in the exact same way as our judgments about rocks and trees. Truths of this latter kind represent a human-independent world; to speak truth in politics, on the other hand, is to give concordant explanations — explanations that durably cohere with both the human world and the world beyond the human” (p.7)
The final chapter turns to the contemporary threats that test this account of truth. Lynch identifies the first threat as the “grand, shameless lie”, where those in power systematically say falsehoods to demonstrate their strength. The second threat is what he names epistemic colonization. To support this claim, he brings the example of the ban of teaching the history of racism or the disregard for the voices of poor communities. Their experiences are simply excluded from what society considers knowledge. Lynch’s solution is straightforward: massive investment in epistemic infrastructure. Democracy must support institutions that preserve a culture of truth, including accessible education regardless of wealth, independent journalism, and the responsible use of AI.
The book’s strength lies in how Lynch assembles his case. He does not merely assert that truth matters. Instead, he claims that without truth, democracy crumbles from within. Democracy loses its autonomy, equality, and capacity for progress. His argument ends with the clear statement: to defend democracy means to defend truth. As he states,
“Truth can’t take care of itself when conspiracy, denialism, and the political ideologies that promote them run rampant. We need a theory of truth in democracy that is formally coherent, humanly grounded, but not idealized. We need, in short, to take care of truth and democracy together” (p. 8)
Lynch’s engagement with political philosophy gives his argument much of its force. Even so, the book has its limits. Whilst Lynch is extremely convincing in providing a diagnostic for contemporary political issues, the practical solutions to protecting science or developing media literacy in the field of AI remain mere aspirations. Lynch never fully confronts the question: how to solve these problems when the institutions on which the author relies are being deliberately dismantled? The diagnostic is described accurately, yet the remedy is left obscure.
Even with these shortcomings, this book will be useful for political philosophers, theorists of democracy, and researchers of disinformation. Readers interested in the role of truth in democratic politics will certainly appreciate the book. The sharpness of Lynch’s argument will surprise, and the author’s debate with Rawls and Rorty will captivate even the most skeptical reader.
Valeriia Shaliakhina is an Assistant Editor in the Democracy and Culture section.
