Speech carries a claim to truth that can override experience and moral taboo alike.

Evidence

I have never experienced anything so intensely as the relationship to truth that lies, in a very specific way, in direct speech. It has always been difficult for me, and basically still is, to realize that a person who is speaking can be a villain, or can be lying. My sense of language’s claim to truth is so strong that it vanquishes all psychology and tends to give me a degree of credulousness towards the person speaking which forms a glaring contradiction to my experience, and is usually only overcome when I see something written by the person concerned and recognize precisely that he cannot speak. My almost insuperable aversion to telling lies is connected only with this awareness, not with any moral taboos … — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 533

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Adorno grounds an absolute truth-claim in living speech while denying it to writing — an inversion of the usual privileging of text.
• SEED: Essay angle: a philosopher’s aversion to lying derived from language’s own truth-claim, not from ethics.
• XREF: connects to: Some post-truth speech is magical thinking rather than mere lying — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 343; Serial falsehood complicates the lie-truth distinction when speakers believe their claims — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 310; Effective discourse that organizes power relations constitutes a regime of truth. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 591 (+4 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Some post-truth speech is magical thinking rather than mere lying — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 343; Serial falsehood complicates the lie-truth distinction when speakers believe their claims — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 310; Effective discourse that organizes power relations constitutes a regime of truth. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 591 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Truth is produced socially through power-sanctioned mechanisms of validation. #complicates (0.82) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 590
• Postmodernism holds that truth claims are really bids for political power #complicates (0.80) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 248
• Serial falsehood complicates the lie-truth distinction when speakers believe their claims #complicates (0.75) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 310