The Liar's Tale: A History of Falsehood

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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, pretence or barefaced lies are hard to resist and easy to employ. With insight into rhetoric, language and the sciences, Campbell launches his discussion with Darwin and evolutionary biology and from there builds a foundation of counter-intuitive philosophical evidence. We encounder 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 Derrids and the post-modernists favouring "meaning" at the expense of truth. Unsettling and original, "The Liar's Tale" should provoke renewed interest and debate about truth and ethics.