The Liar's Tale: A History of Falsehood Book

A bold new exploration of ethics and philosophy, The Liar's Tale extols the benefits of falsehood. Fireflies find mates by duping rivals with patterns of deceptive flashes. Politicians win elections by distorting statistics and telling half-truths. The devices of falsehood, whether simple exaggeration, pretense, or barefaced lies, are hard to resist and easy to employ. Now, in a provocative work that turns Sissela Bok's Lying on its head, Jeremy Campbell presents a daring inquiry into the nature of deception. With insight into rhetoric, language, and the sciences, Campbell launches his discussion with Darwin and evolutionary biology, and from there builds a foundation of philosophical evidence that is both counterintuitive and highly engaging. We encounter the purism of the ancients and their battles with the Sophists, the many faces of falsehood decried by Montaigne, the dark ethos of Kant and Nietzsche, and the reckless shift made by Derrida and the postmodernists favoring "meaning" at the expense of truth. Unsettling and highly original, The Liar's Tale is sure to provoke a new debate about truth and ethics.Read More