ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to bar easy dismissal of Michel Foucault's work on the grounds that it is irrealist in conception or by implication. It uses John Searle's articulation and defense of realism as the touchstone in considering Foucault's tacit realism. The criterial use detaches—or attempts to detach—truth from the world. The constructivist use, which casts truth as produced by power, is a necessary complement to the criterial. The chapter describes how Foucault uses truth in ways that are differentiated by the contextual peculiarities of intradiscursive justification or the "means by which each is sanctioned" in a regime of truth. Foucault "inscribes" truth in discourse to deal with how sociologists, social psychologists, cultural anthropologists, educators, psychiatrists, penologists, vocational counselors, and others conjure up natures and essences. The chapter concludes by noting that Foucault's treatment of truth discloses a degree of complexity regarding truth that traditional philosophy ignores or obscures.
