Falsehood Disguised: Unmasking the Truth in La Rochefoucauld

Falsehood Disguised analyzes La Rochefoucauld’s ideas on truth and falsehood in the context of his views on self-love, on the passions, and on vice and virtue. It also explores his views on the subject in relation to what he sees as the extremely fragile foundations of the social contract. It examines these thorny ethical problems first in the context of the Baroque culture that directly influenced his thought and then in the light of the work of other moralists, including Gracian, Daniel Dyke, Descartes, and the Jansenists Blaise Pascal and Pierre Nicole. Through close textual analysis of La Rochefoucauld’s writings, Richard Hodgson studies the moralist’s use of metaphors such as the mask as well as his very personal concept of what constitutes an etre vrai, or genuine person. The study then traces the impact of La Rochefoucauld’s ideas on thinkers from Vauvenargues and Chamfort to Nietzsche, Lautreamont, and Lacan. It concludes by suggesting reasons why La Rochefoucauld’s concept of truth continues to have such enormous appeal to the modern reader.