Knowledge, Power, Truth: Reflections on Politics Today
Internal workshop
May 3rd – 4th 2018
Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value
University of Pardubice, Czech Republic
We live in an era of political uncertainty and instability. A loss of confidence in the effectiveness of representative democracy has coincided with the rise of nationalist and localist movements. At the same time, there is growing dissatisfaction with political structures that sustain systematic poverty, major income and wealth inequality, and gender and racial discrimination. In this context, concepts of shared knowledge, public deliberation and collective trust have grown in importance at the same moment that they have come under ideological attack.
In this workshop, we will consider both how contemporary political issues should inform political philosophy, and how political philosophy may help us better understand aspects of the current political situation. To this end, we will examine the role and importance of notions such as truth and knowledge in contemporary political discourse, and we will consider how inflections of these concepts shape power relations within both political and philosophical spheres.
All are welcome to attend and participate in the discussions.
