Abstract

This dissertation begins with the observation that politics in the twentieth century is distinctively marked by the division of the world into two ideological camps--western liberal democracies and Marxist-Leninist socialist regimes. While the current "post-cold war" condition does qualify the division significantly, this drawn out war fought in the name of political ideas that claim to have the truth of a better society for all is yet to be assessed. ;More specifically, the dissertation examines the role of ideas in politics. A series of related questions is raised. Why does it matter politically how ideas are constituted epistemologically? Does the claim to having the correct ideas necessarily imply a claim to authority? Is truth therefore power? Does a transcendental notion of truth that makes absolute truth claims have anti-democratic political ramifications? Is a contextualist notion necessarily democratic? ;The thoughts of Plato, Hobbes, Weber, Arendt and Foucault are examined in terms of these questions. The stark contrast between Plato and Hobbes on these issues is crucial to our consideration of Weber, Arendt and Foucault. These latter thinkers are treated in the context of postmodernism, taken here as a major intellectual movement in western liberal democracies. Postmodernism makes explicit connection between truth and power by politicizing truth to the point where "objective knowledge" is thoroughly discredited. Accordingly, Foucault represents the postmodernist view on this problematic. Weber is regarded as a precursor of postmodernism and Arendt a critic. ;The juxtaposition of these thinkers provides an array of answers to the above questions. Yet these thinkers, Foucault included, all argue for a certain disjunction between politics and truth. This is important not because truth has nothing to do with politics. It is precisely because truth has to do with politics. In other words, it matters to all of these thinkers politically who gets to decide the truth in the end. The dissertation closes with some thoughts on the nature of ideology in post-Mao China. The regime's intolerance of opposition indicates that one can ill afford a project like postmodernism if the state is the sole producer of truth