Within a national research program, coordinated by Michele Nicoletti and funded by the Italian Ministry of Education (PRIN 2008), PTP pormoted the following project:
Truth, Politics, Justice: Theories and Practices
To reflect on the relation between truth and politics requires to move on different levels and to assume different perspectives. At a meta-philosophical level, we need to detect the reasons for the widespread mistrust of truth and to evaluate their persuasiveness. Truth is regarded as politically unfitting because it prevents the agreement and because it is authoritarian to the extent that it pretends to be a standard independently from the consensus. Consequentially, metaphysical beliefs are expelled from the public realm because they are untreatable and political standards, when presented as true and not negotiable, are considered unacceptable. Such arguments are rooted in the equation between truth and fundamentalist attitudes— an assumption that requires more in depth examination—and in an ideal of truth that identifies truth with certainty. It is yet to verify whether unfasten the truth-certainty tie allows to think the reference to truth as necessary just when, lacking an agreement, reliable criteria to evaluate states of the world or individual choices are more needed. Furthermore, truth is seen as politically irrelevant and its pursuit as an obstacle to practical attainments. Nevertheless, political philosophy seems unable to justify its criteria without referring to truth. Therefore it is necessary to prove whether or not the search for true criteria, when true means theoretically adequate, leads unavoidably to results that are practically and politically irrelevant. It is a matter of understanding which are the practical tasks of a political philosophy that, pursuing the theoretically adequacy of its thesis, suspends any concern for feasibility and holds a perspective and a logic that are foreign to politics. Considering the liberal paradigm, the connection between truth and politics can be analysed referring to notions of objectivity and neutrality. In the first case, it is interesting to notice that the notion of objectivity provided by political liberalism, in trying to constitute a middle way between realism and relativism, brackets truth yet without offering a convincing alternative. Political liberalism risks founding normative principles on contingent political agreements. It is therefore useful to look back at the tie between objectivity and truth. As well urgent is to evaluate whether it is possible to found political principles on metaphysical assumptions on autonomy or equality, without endangering liberal forms of live. The hypothesis is that the reference to objectivity and truth does not imply any dogmatism, but in fact allows liberal political philosophy to recover its normative tasks. Neutrality can be understood either as moral vacuum or as epistemic abstinence. It can identify a political morality that can be shared by individuals asserting different truths. Political liberalism is a moral, although partial and non-comprehensive, theory that intends neutrality as political. The aim is to prove, on the one hand, how the strength of such a partial moral theory rests on its capacity to host different beliefs, all held as true. On the other hand, to prove that neutrality can be claimed through an appeal to the efficacy of neutral liberal practices in managing conflicts, rather than by claiming justifications to be a priori true. To render the picture it is worth examining the relation between truth and justice. Two lines of research will be developed. The first focuses on the difficult balance between justice and truth and considers the ends of trans-national justice. The aim is to formulate, on the basis of concrete cases and of the experience of the Truth Commissions, a model of transitional justice that gives account of possible tensions and equilibriums between truth and justice. It needs to be clarified what happens to truth when it is publicly recognised, when it is included in the cognitive public scene, and how this recognition affects politics. The second line of investigation focuses on the relation between judiciary procedure and truth. In this case the reference is, on the one hand, to anthropological and historical literature, and to the history of right, on the other hand, to sentences discussing the truth of visions of the world or scientific theories, e.g. the German Constitutional Court pronouncements about negationism of Shoah. On normative terms this requires to verify whether it is possible to identify some criteria for deciding if and in which cases, within liberal and pluralistic societies, resort to juridical power for univocally establishing certain truths is acceptable. And to evaluate both the amount and quality of the consensus that is required to preserve a political order, and the amount and quality of admissible dissent about the truth of different systems of beliefs.
John Rawls’s claim on the fact of pluralism seems to be a paradigmatic point in contemporary liberal philosophy. According to this claim, to carry on a metaphysical defence of political principles, or to legitimate the publicity of true beliefs, is neither possible nor desirable, given the unavoidable conflict among different metaphysics that characterizes mature liberal societies. The thesis implies that political principles are both without foundations and impossible to found. These implications are shared beyond the boundaries of political liberalism, by perspectives using different vocabularies and methods. Despite the different premises, all these perspectives converge on a general distrust toward any appeal to truth in the public realm. The suspicion against truth permeates the whole post-metaphysical thought, which confirms Hannah Arendt’s remark that truth and politics do not get along very well. (Arendt 1995). In political philosophy’s debate of the second half of 20th century it is possible to draw three lines of interpretation concerning the relation between truth and politics. 1) Truth is foreign to politics and it is inherently coercive (Arendt 1968). By claiming for truth, political philosophy risks to slip into a despotic attitude toward politics itself. 2) Truth is a source of divisions and an obstacle to the practical tasks of political philosophy that lie in proposing sharable criteria to guide policies choice and actions (Rawls 1993). 3) Truth has no relevance in politics: political philosophy should bracket truth to focus on re-describing principles and practices that are regarded as desirable in a particular context, so to favour agreement on them (Rorty 1991). The three interpretative streams point in the same direction: political philosophy should guarantee the practical relevance and political adequacy of its theses without appealing to criteria of truth that transcend the political realm. This argument calls into questions the connection between truth and objectivity. Political objectivity refers to the independence of political principles from contingent points of view. Rawls proposes a version of political objectivity that is careful not to slip into truth. If agreement is the goal of political liberalism, then truth must be avoided when deciding on political principles because it is divisive. Objectivity is here understood as the choice of political principles under ideal conditions. These conditions are granted, among other matters, by a “metaphysical ignorance” that enables the political consensus of those who disagree on truth. This moderate objectivity is a via media between two versions of political agreement, one rooted in the objective value of political principles, the other rooted in self-interest. But the practicability of this middle way remains uncertain: is it possible to hold a genuine moral commitment to political principles not regarded as true? To put more specifically: is it possible to overcome this uncertainty through a notion of neutrality? It is in doubt whether liberalism is a perspective that keeps neutral toward individual’s conceptions of good life, or if it is a comprehensive doctrine that includes a theory of values, an epistemology and a controversial metaphysic. Truth is problematic also as one shifts to the practices of judgement. The tension between justice and truth emerges, on the one hand, from the comparison between different paradigms of justice under emergency conditions, on the other hand, from the relation between truth and judiciary procedure. The case of the Truth Commissions articulates in an innovative (and controversial) way the relation between justice and the building of new democratic constitutional orders. The comparison between a retributive paradigm of justice, that prescribes to punish those who are responsible for the violation, and a restorative one, focused on therapeutic and reparative dynamics aimed at reconciliation, leaves open theoretical and normative questions involving the meaning of retributive justice and its possible, or desirable, negotiability. (Rotberg & Thompson 2003) However, as investigations of juridical culture point out, judiciary truth tends to appear the product of a construction rather than of an ascertainment, therefore verisimilar, rather than truthful in a proper sense. Nevertheless, the condition to socially legitimate judiciary decisions, and their limited power to recompose interpersonal conflicts, is the belief that these decisions are based on a verification of facts, namely on truth in a proper sense. (Habermas 2001 ) It remains quite unexamined the role of judiciary procedure in producing a truth that is independent from the reality of states of the world and immune to empirical falsification. References Allen J., (1999), «Balancing Justice and Social Unity: Political Theory and the Idea of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission», Univ. of Toronto Law Journal, Vol. 49, n. 3, Summer.
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Research question and hypotheses Is it possible to consider truth as a politically and philosophically fruitful notion? This is the central question the research here presented aims at answering. Such a question will be addressed from a meta-philosophical perspective, in normative terms and by referring to practices that appeal to truth out of political or juridical intents. To begin with, it is necessary to investigate the sources of the widespread diffidence and uneasiness toward truth. This requires to assess whether the desire for truth is politically hazardous and pointless or unavoidable and potentially productive and whether political philosophy should strive for eradicating such a desire or run the risk of endorsing it. Both these issues lead to inquiry the absolutistic character underlying appeals to truth. Certainly, anti-absolutism is a crucial commitment for post-metaphysical political philosophy: the most radical exponent of post-metaphysical thought – Rorty – claims that political philosophy should abandon the “compulsive divinization” of its commitments and that it should consider them as simply and fully human. To be clear, Rorty’s position exemplifies a tendency which goes well beyond the liberal paradigm. That is why it is all the more necessary to wonder whether a similar request is receivable by political philosophy. And more precisely, whether it is a receivable request if political philosophy aims not only at registering evaluative disagreements but if it is committed to the idea that fundamental questions allow for right and wrong answers, that not all answers are equivalent and, what is more, that some answers are non-negotiable. The need to go back over the relationship between politics and truth and to, eventually, rehabilitate the positive role of truth – which is the primary aim of the research – is urged not only by meta-philosophical considerations or normative insights about the necessity of critically revising the main paradigms of political philosophy. It also springs from the need of reconsidering those practices that cannot but explicitly put into question the relationship between politics and truth. In fact, focusing on how similar practices understand such a relationship opens up new lines of investigation about this theme. In particular, the case of the Truth Commissions raises the question concerning the link between truth and justice and between truth and reconciliation. Such a case also helps in enlightening the tensions and the possible arrangements among truth, justice, and reconciliation and it seems to hint at a conception of justice that cannot avoid reference to truth. More generally, it seems that the connection between judicial proceedings and truth is a constant through the history of human societies and that it is meant to accommodate fundamental and universal social or political exigencies. It is therefore interesting to review a similar connection by investigating the role juridical power plays in the ascertainment of truths which concern beliefs or systems of beliefs, be they metaphysical or scientific. Similar theoretical objectives will be pursued through: - seminars on the following themes: Truth and Politics: a comparison between Analytical and Continentals; Justice, Truth, and Reconciliation in the experience of the Truth Commissions; Judiciary truth? The sentences against negationism; Can liberalism be only political? Expected publications: a thematic volume; articles on Italian and foreign journals; thematic web site. Project Development The first step to be taken consists in scrutinizing the reasons underlying the widespread theoretical diffidence and uneasiness toward truth. Similar reasons are paradigmatically, although not always persuasively, exemplified by the liberal attitude toward truth: the liberal argument banishes truth from politics since it conceives truth as unfitting for pacification. It is not by chance that such an argument is framed within a theoretical background modelled on the case of the wars of religion and on the privatisation of religious beliefs favoured by the Reformation. Considered against the background of the wars of religion, it is almost clear why a privatistic interpretation of beliefs can serve to mitigate fundamentalist zeal. On the contrary, the equation between metaphysical passion and fundamentalist zeal – which emphasises the inadequacy of truth for solving the problem of agreement and, therefore, legitimizes the liberal veto on the public expression of truth – appears much less obvious and, accordingly, in need of further investigation. In particular, it is worth pointing out that such an equation relies on two postulates, that is, on two theses which are left undemonstrated. The first postulate sanctions the impossibility of reconciling different moral conceptions: the disagreement dividing them is inescapable and impossible to be productively overcome. Thus, the first postulate suggests to interpret pluralism as an opaque and static fact. The second postulate, instead, affirms the political necessity of renouncing to truth since truth itself is responsible for mortal conflicts. What is left unquestioned by these two postulates is an implicit assumption about the intrinsically prevaricatory character connected to the concern for publicly discussing the truth of moral beliefs and of political principles. It is worth noticing that the intent of immunizing politics against truth is not peculiar of the liberal argument only: the two most significant political philosophers of the 20th century – Rawls and Arendt – converge on this point. Nonetheless, it seems necessary to primarily focus on the problematic traits connected to the immunizing strategy adopted by political liberalism. To begin with, it seems opportune to question the assumption according to which reasons for believing – in that they are reasons for believing to be right – unavoidably follow a domineering logic, a logic which requires commitment to truth itself, a logic which is modelled on the allegedly unreasonable commitment to a religious faith. Indeed, the liberal argument justifies the preclusion for controversial beliefs to advance their reasons in political deliberations with reference to the paradigmatic case of politically unreliable beliefs, that is, to the case of religious beliefs. Such beliefs are presented as unreliable since they show an absolutistic tendency and since, in the dispute that originated modern politics and modern political philosophy, they played the role of the adversary opposing the liberal argument. This explains why the post-secular reappearing of religious beliefs on the public scene poses a serious metaphysical objection against liberal commitments to neutrality. With respect to this, Rawls’s claim for reformulating neutrality requirements through a political version of liberalism calls for reconsideration. First, it is necessary to clarify in what sense political liberalism may be intended as a moral, although partial, theory and in what sense neutrality is to be understood as political. Second, it is useful to show that the strength of a similar partial theory about the public good resides in its intrinsic capacity to welcome and accommodate diversity and to verify whether liberalism can be still defended as the best solution for moral disagreements characterising pluralistic societies. Two further questions need to be raised. Can internal reasons to be liberals be transformed into external reasons to become liberals? Can the universalistic claims of liberalism be defended beyond the boundaries of liberal forms of life by being vindicated, not as abstract and aprioristic claims, but with reference to the success of liberal practices in dealing with conflicts and injustices? The question about the universalistic claims of liberalism requires also to assess whether the acceptability of liberalism must be tested only with respect to a specific and congenial audience or it must be redefined in order to vindicate its adequacy to different audiences. The answer is to be sought within liberal societies and through a comparison among different understandings – inclusive or exclusive – about public discourse. Such a comparison offer hints for reflecting on the allegedly fundamentalist vocation of truth and on the supposed risks connected to the choice of rendering politically visible the cognitive differences underlying divergent moral beliefs and reasons. Following a similar path, it will be possible to point out an important requirement peculiar to the liberal strategy. The absolutistic character of the disagreement among beliefs claiming to assert their truth is thought to preclude the possibility of solving such a disagreement with reference to a truth-claim. Therefore, as the liberal argument goes, it is necessary to resort to tolerance. Yet, it is worth noticing that, although it cannot be vindicated as a true standard, tolerance must be asserted as an objective and unconditional standard. That is, it is the public acknowledgement of tolerance that makes it possible to solve the absolutistic disagreement among different religious truth-claims. Nonetheless, it seems that tolerance is itself an absolute political principle, a constitutive and non-negotiable principle. Accordingly, while truth is banished from the public scene and it is reduced to a privatistic matter concerning believers who are willing to recognise the objective irrelevance of their truth-claims, an absolutistic exigency reappears when liberalism faces the problem of securing a principle which allows for pacification. This displacement of absolutistic exigencies is typical of those political theories that endorse non-absolutism not for pragmatic reasons or on relativistic terms. Rather, this displacement characterises those theories which aim at maintaining the possibility of defending the objectivity of political principles and at assuring, one way or the other, their special reliability and validity. Therefore, focusing on the meta-philosophical aspects of the relationship between political philosophy and truth will also require to cope with the “need of absolute” which ambiguously marks both political philosophy and politics. In particular, it will be necessary to take into account the ambiguities resulting from the liberal exigency of unconditioned principles, such as tolerance, and the liberal attempt to assert their unconditional character on political grounds only and abstaining from vindicating their unconditionality philosophically. Under this respect, the hypothesis to be explored is that political philosophy and politics should rely on quasi-absolutism or on an unfounded and contestable foundationalism. In addition, it is opportune to verify, on the one hand, whether refusing any appeal to truth allows political philosophy to properly vindicate the theoretical adequacy of its solutions and, on the other hand, whether a political notion of objectivity consents political philosophy to appropriately defend its principles or it makes their validity depend on contingent agreements, thus relativizing their truth and rendering it contextual to specific discursive communities. It seems that by avoiding the question concerning the truth, intended in terms of theoretical adequacy, of its desirability criteria – those criteria allowing to distinguish between adequate and inadequate practices and allowing to identify appropriate courses of action – political philosophy is not up to convincingly vindicate the principles and models it develops: they are presented as desirable simply because they are relevant from a practical point of view or because they meet political exigencies. Nonetheless, it is also necessary to verify whether, by advancing truth-claims, political philosophy is bound to lead to results that are completely irrelevant on practical or political grounds. A similar tendency to politicise political philosophy also explains the distinction usually drawn between justifiability and truth. Yet, such a distinction is to be better explored by questioning the appropriateness of a procedural notion of objectivity and by assessing the normative satisfactoriness of principles arrived at through an idealisation of a given and situated point of view. This will help to evaluate whether a more robust account of political objectivity is in need. From a more practical perspective too, attempts at balancing normative requirements and political commitments are unavoidable and dilemmatic. This appears as clear considering the case of a new democratic regime confronted with a past characterised by abuses and violence. The liberal argument for the banishment of truth from politics with the aim of guaranteeing pacification reappears here in a different form. In fact, it seems that reticence or silence about truth, or even the overcoming of truth via forgiveness, may be politically fruitful in order to secure stability and pacification. Yet, it seems that a society in transition toward a new regime cannot find reliable foundations in a partial account of truth: for instance, respect for the rule of law or for rights seems incompatible with impunity for those who have infringed both. Indeed, differently from the liberal case, it seems that, in the case of transitional justice, truth and justice cannot but stand together, it seems that they need each other. It is therefore necessary to elaborate a model of transitional justice that does not rely on an expediential trade-off between truth and justice. In addition, relying on the experience of the Truth Commissions, it will be possible to better probe what happens to truth when it is publicly acknowledged, that is when it becomes part of the cognitive public scene, and what happens to politics because of such an acknowledgment. Similar insights can be gained also by considering the kind of truth which results form judicial proceedings and the social role such a truth is associated with. Indeed, judicial proceedings produce true facts: they ascribe a peculiar kind of truth to facts, a truth which does not depend on the fact of the matter but which relies on a judicial decision which seems up, to a certain extent, to resist empirical refutations. In addition, juridical power has usually been and is still required, not only to ascertain the truth about certain facts and deeds, but also to sentence about the truth of certain beliefs. It is then necessary to consider some pronouncements of the constitutional courts of Western countries concerning the truth of visions of the world or of scientific theories, such as negationistic theories about Shoah, the hypothesis of intelligent design, and racist theories. Once the role of juridical power in the production of truth is reconstructed, it will be necessary to verify if and when, given liberal principles of freedom of opinion and respect for different world views, it is appropriate to ascribe to juridical power itself the task of qualifying as true or false certain opinions and world views.
– a final conference on Truth and politics: theories and practices
– research missions abroad for favouring contacts connected to the aims of the project with special interest for the following academic institutions: Centre for Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, Katholike Universiteit Leuven; Karman Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Bern; Forum on Religion, European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Sciences; Cambridge Centre for Political Thought; The Political Theory Project, Brown University, Usa; University Center for Human Values, Princeton; IEP, Paris; Department of Politics, Univ. of Sheffield; School of Advanced Studies, Institute of Philosophy, London University; Bristol University, Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship.
The research focused on the relationship between truth and politics. The investigation aimed at assessing whether the desire for truth is both futile and dangerous in politics, so that political philosophy should avoid it, or it rather represents an unavoidable and fruitful desire, which political philosophy should endorse. These questions were addressed along different lines of research and by taking into account diverse perspectives. On the one hand, the role of truth in politics was investigated from a meta-theoretical standpoint, with a view to examine the reasons underlying the widespread diffidence toward truth and to verify its plausibility. On the other hand, the relationship between truth and politics was addressed from a normative perspective, with special emphasis on the liberal paradigm, in order to assess whether the exclusion of truth from public discourse is functional to pursue liberal aims, such as toleration and respect. In addition, the investigation focused on practices that call directly into question the relationship between truth and justice. More precisely, with reference to the case of transitional justice and to experiences of the Truth Commissions, the analysis addressed the controversial connections among truth, justice and reconciliation, thus identifying different possible tensions among such notions and highlighting the relevance of a concept of justice that incorporates that of truth. The role of truth was further examined with reference to judiciary power, appealed to for ascertaining the truth about given events. In particular, under this respect, the analysis was meant to investigate the specificity of judiciary truth and to examine judicial proceedings in which the truth of beliefs and of systems of beliefs is at stake. The research was inspired by the widespread theoretical tendency to consider the appeal to truth in public space, if not harmful and dangerous, at least unnecessary and counter-productive. Such a tendency characterizes large part of contemporary political philosophy and it can be traced back, at least partially, to John Rawls’s thesis about the fact of pluralism. Following such a thesis, given the insurmountable conflict between divergent metaphysical views, which marks mature liberal societies, it is neither possible nor desirable to rely on a metaphysical defence of political principles, which would require appealing to truth. Such a theoretical position is particularly interesting for it informs actual practices and it affects current understandings about the proper way to regulate public discourse. To better clarify similar aspects, and to identify the distortions the notion of truth is subjected to in liberal and democratic societies, The meta-theoretical part of the investigation was conducted on the background of such widespread distrust toward truth. Indeed, the meta-theoretical investigation explored the reasons underlying such an attitude with a view to better specify the kind of danger truth is supposed to represent for politics and, vice-versa, the kind of danger politics supposedly represents for truth. To this end, the investigation addressed authors, whose position on the relationship between truth and politics qualifies as paradigmatic, through two series of seminars – one held during the a.y. 2010-11, one held in 2011-2012 – coordinated by Antonella Besussi and titled “Verità e Politica. Opzioni, metodi, stili”. Each seminar was devoted to a classical author in political philosophy, whose position on the relationship between truth and politics was presented by a competent scholars. Organized on a monthly basis over the course of the entire project, these seminars represented a very fruitful opportunity to go through the fundamental stages of the development of philosophical reflection on such a relationship. Moreover, the analysis of the various positions endorsed by the selected authors allowed the identification of the most relevant and controversial points concerning this theme and it provide clear clues about the available options, about their premises and implications, both normative and practical. The meetings also provided insights to appreciate differences and similarities among the authors addressed, which are Still with the intent of assessing the reasons underlying the widespread distrust toward truth, the investigation focused on different meta-ethical options, such as constructivism and realism, which have diverse implications with respect to truth and to its role in politics. Such meta-ethical options are also connected to different strategies to exclude, neutralize, discipline truth or, on the contrary, to affirm its indispensable role as an evaluative standard or as the foundation of appropriate normative principles. In particular, Antonella Besussi addressed similar topics in her research and she has recently published a book Disputandum est. La passione per la verità nel discorso pubblico, (Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2012). The book examines the implications connected to the exclusion of deep disputes from public discourse: it explores the precisely, the book The second line of inquiry addressed the liberal paradigm. In particular, the investigation focused on Rawls’s model of poltical liberalism, within which the diffididence toward truth assumes a specific emphasis and connotation. Truth is indeed conceived as a fundamentalist vocations which tends to prompt disagreement and which hence confilicts with the pacificatory aims pursued by political liberalism. More precisely, political liberalism emphasizes the absolutist character of disagreements among beliefs that claim truth for themselves and it accordingly rejects the possibility of overcoming disagreement by appealing to truth. However, political liberalism does not intend to defend anti-absolutism in pragmatic or relativistic terms. It rather aims at preserving the possibility to vindicate the objectivity of political principles and to affirm their special validity. The research investigated such a thesis in order to assess the plausibility of reconciling the refusal of truth with the aim of vindicating the objectivity of non-negotianable political principles, such as toleration. In fact, political liberalism is committed to justifying toleration, not as a true standard, but still as an objectiive and non-negotiable standard. Truth is excluded from the political domain and it becomes a matter for personal beliefs on the part of individuals, who are available to acknowledge the objective irrelevance of their truth-claims. The need for absolute fixed points is displaced and it is meant to guarantee the tenability of a principle which, in exchange for such an acknowledgement, promises pacification. Disagreement among conflicting truth-claims is solved precisely through the shared acknowledgement of toleration as a constitutive Political liberalism and its approach to truth are the focus of a book by Roberta Sala, La verità sospesa. Ragionevolezza e irragionevolezza nella filosofia politica di John Rawls (Liguori, Napoli 2012), which investigates the possibility and the implications of excluding truth from political and The third line of research had a less theoretical character and was meant to investigate practices that directly call into question the relationship between truth and justice. First, starting from concrete cases and from the experiences of the Truth Commissions, such a relationship was addressed with a view to understand what happens to truth when it is publicly acknowledged and becomes part of the cognitive public scene, on the one hand, and what happens to politics through such an acknowledgement, on the other. Moreover, the research examined both retributive and restorative approaches to justice, the former requiring to punish violations and abuses, the second, which is proper of Truth Commissions and relies on therapeutic dynamics, meant to promote reconciliation. The comparison between the two approaches raises interesting theoretical and normative questions concerning the very meaning of retributive justice and its possible or desirable negotiability. On similar themes, Antonella Besussi, Beatrice Magni and Francesca Pasquali promoted a two-days international conference – “Truth and Justice. Normative Questions, Political Practices”- held on 13th and 14th April 2011 The relationship between truth and justice was investigated also with reference to judiciary sentences that discuss the truth of some world-view or of some scientific theory. First, as attested by positivist theories of law, judiciary truth tends to qualify more as a constructivist product rather than the outcome of an empirical ascertainment, and it is intended as verosimilar rather than properly truthful. Accordingly, the research focused on the condition that make judicial decisions socially legitimate to solve interpersonal conflicts. To better clarify similar aspects, Alessandra Facchi and Nicola Riva organized a conference – “Giustizia e verità. Una ricogniszione della funzione di verità del diritto” - held on 27th February 2012. The conference provided useful clues to better 
the members of the research group organized a seminar meeting with Franca D’Agostini, to discuss her book Verità avvelenata. Buoni e cattivi elementi nel dibattito pubblico (Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2010). Held on May 18th 2010, the meeting was fruitful to better understand the peculiar features of public discourse in liberal and democratic societies, where truth is disqualified due to the general and widespread distrust and suspect against it.The presentation of D’Agostini book and the discussion that followed were indeed functional to clarify the factors that determine such an attitude toward truth and its implications: by rejecting truth as a standard to assess the reliability of arguments, the concern with their goodness recedes to the background and the necessity to discriminate between good and bad arguments loses its grip.
rarely compared for they belong to different traditions. During the seminars, interesting and original interpretations of these authors emerged, interpretations which may fruitfully contribute to the ongoing debate on the role of truth in politics. That is why the members of the research group decided to collect the material elaborated for the seminar in a book, “Verità e politica. Filosofie contemporanee”, edited by Antonella Besussi and published by Carocci in 2013. The book collects 14 essays devoted to the contemporary authors presented and discussed during the seminars (William James, Hans Kelsen, Max Weber, Leo Strauss, Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, Ronald Dworkin, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Bernard Williams, and David Lewis).
focuses on the consequences connected to the exclusion of deep disagreement, namely disagreements which call into question metaphysical beliefs on, say, what is a good life or death, on which practical and public solutions on similar issues are appropriate and why. Such an exclusion is typical of liberal-democratic regimes and it is justified with reference to the fear that principled disagreements on similar controversial questions will have conflictual or destabilizing effects and that appeals to truth will display a prevaricatory character. Similar fears give rise to an agnostic strategy, which displaces truth from public discuourse and qualfies the latter as accessible only to sharable, or even shared, reasons and arguments. Accordingly, arguments and reasons appealing to truth, or based on metaphysical beliefs, are silenced. The book explores the limits of such an approach and it emphasizes the need to guarantee the possibility for principled disagreements, and for beliefs underlying them, to access public discourse: by exposing them to open discursive exchange and scrutiny, beliefs are subtracted froom a possible dogmatic turn. Open exchange requires indeed the disagreeing parts to convince each other about the preferability of their theses. Since they must go through rational discussion, fundamental beliefs need to make their most deep assumptions explict and available to rational testing. In the case of disputes, argumentative language persists and the conditions of possibility for rational exchange are guaranteed by the nintrinsic value attributed to truth, both as an epistemic standard functional to assess the accuracy of the relevant evidence and as a metaphysical standard fruitful to assess the reliability of ontological theses.
political principle. On similar themes, Roberta Sala promoted an international workshop – “Toleration and Truth” – held on 21st October 20011. The workshop was a very fruitful occasion to assess the tenability and the limits of the model of toleration endorsed within the liberal paradigm. Moreover, the workshop provided interesting clues to critically review the Rawlsian attempt to reformulate both neutrality and toleration through a political version of liberalism and to identify with major precision the shortcomings of such a project.
philosophical reflection and of replacing it with the notion of reasonableness. More precisely, the book examines such a notion with a view to assess whether reasonableness is sufficient to promote the ends political liberalism endorses, namely the practical goal of overcoming conflicts.The book emphasize thes need to more punctually address, not just the notion or reasonableness, but also that of unreasonableness. It is precisely by reformulating the notion of unreasonableness that it is possible to seriously deal with the different accounts of truth currently present in contemporary societies. Indeed, as the book contends, the overlapping consensus – the only solution Rawls considers appropriate – is not the only option apt to grant peaceful and stable cooperation. On the contrary, the book emphasizes the merits of a stable modus vivendi, which is more inclusive with respect to unreasonable individuals, who do not adhere to the requirements of public reason and which nonetheless do not represent a threat to order or to stability.
and organized with the contribution of Fondazione – Compagnia di San Paolo. The conference enlightened the more controversial aspects concerning the relationship between truth and justices. Such aspects emerge indeed with major precision when, on the background of conflictual situations or situations in which past abuses and violations have to been addressed, reconciliatory aspirations are in tension with the need to ascertain what happened and to identify and punish the perpetrators. The research moved on this background in order to investigate the tensions between different normative commitments, namely the commitment to justice and the commitment to truth, and to assess whether and to what extent they are incompatible or, on the contrary, they reciprocally reinforcing.
understand the role of truth, and its specific profile, within judicial proceedings. Similar clues were crucial to investigate those cases in which judicial courts are required to rule about beliefs or scientific theories, as in the case of the German Constitutional Court required to rule about theories that deny the Shoa. From a normative perspective, the point was to assess the possibility of elaborating criteria apt to define whether, and under which conditions, in liberal and pluralistic societies, it is necessary and opportune to appeal to judiciary power to establish the validity of certain truth-claims, More generally, under this respect, the research intended to examine which kind of consensus is necessary to preserve the political order and which space can be left to dissenting views about systems of beliefs.
