As the nation continues to recover from the ravages of the Trump presidency — our diminished standing in the world, a crippled economy, the exacerbation of race relations, a setback to addressing climate change — there is a positive development for which Donald Trump can take credit: It turns out that many Americans may indeed care about truth.
That’s not a development we can take for granted.
One of the intellectual movements in the academy in recent decades has been something called post-structuralism, which, taken to its logical conclusions, undermines the notion of absolute truth. Post-structuralism denies, or at least minimizes, the importance of authorial intent. In other words, what the author writes or intends in a work of literature, for example, is far less important than the meaning or the interpretation that the reader, or critic, derives from it. Put simply — well, far too simply — post-structuralism is a radical form of subjectivism, even narcissism. The notion of objective truth or meaning takes a back seat to the perceptions of the reader or the listener. Perhaps the best illustration of this was Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s declaration about the existence of “alternative facts.”
I’m inclined to believe that the idea of truth as relative also emerged out of the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. In an age when psychotropic drugs produced an alternative reality, the mantra was “do your own thing” or “whatever,” which has insinuated itself into...
Schubert Jonckheer & Kolbe LLP advises Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) investors that the firm is investigating potential legal claims arising from alleged false and misleading statements about the co...