The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth
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Overview
Arming Americans to defend the truth from today’s war on facts
“In what could be the timeliest book of the year, Rauch aims to arm his readers to engage with reason in an age of illiberalism.”
—Newsweek
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood.
In 2016 Russian trolls and bots nearly drowned the truth in a flood of fake news and conspiracy theories, and Donald Trump and his troll armies continued to do the same. Social media companies struggled to keep up with a flood of falsehoods, and too often didn’t even seem to try. Experts and some public officials began wondering if society was losing its grip on truth itself. Meanwhile, another new phenomenon appeared: “cancel culture.” At the push of a button, those armed with a cellphone could gang up by the thousands on anyone who ran afoul of their sanctimony.
In this pathbreaking book, Jonathan Rauch reaches back to the parallel eighteenth-century developments of liberal democracy and science to explain what he calls the “Constitution of Knowledge”—our social system for turning disagreement into truth.
By explicating the Constitution of Knowledge and probing the war on reality, Rauch arms defenders of truth with a clearer understanding of what they must protect, why they must do—and how they can do it. His book is a sweeping and readable description of how every American can help defend objective truth and free inquiry from threats as far away as Russia and as close as the cellphone.
“The digital age was supposed to bring about the blessings of
unlimited knowledge fueled by radically egalitarian free speech
allowing everyone to access, share, and learn from freely available
information to the benefit and progress of all. Instead, an
epistemic crisis supercharged by viral disinformation and
indifference to truth has bred deep cynicism about the benefits of
free speech and the liberal ideals that underpin this increasingly
unpopular idea. In his unputdownable new book, Jonathan Rauch
provides both a surgically precise diagnosis and a promising cure
for the ailments that torment the twenty-first century with its
crisis of authority, distrust, and rampant tribalism. We ignore
Rauch’s warning and prescription at our own peril.”
—Jacob Mchangama, founder and executive director of Justitia;
author of Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social
Media
“Liberty, of course, requires constant vigilance, but who would
have thought until recently that the idea of truth needed
defending? Sadly, we now see that it does, but happily, Jonathan
Rauch has come to the rescue of both truth and liberty in this
thought-provoking, essential work.”
—Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., president of Purdue University and former
governor of Indiana
“Rauch's graceful and accessible writing takes us into the abyss
of a dark new age, where Trumpian disinformation and even stifling
wokeness threaten the search for truth, but then shows us the path
to reality-based uplands. Rauch proves there really is a
constitution of knowledge, if we can only keep it.”
—James Comey, former FBI director; author of A Higher
Loyalty and Saving Justice
“The ability to talk in good faith about a shared reality is a
foundational element of civics that we didn’t know we had until we
suddenly and surprisingly lost it. Jonathan Rauch explains how we
got it in the first place and how we are now letting it slip away.
His telling of the story is well grounded in history and philosophy
as well as in the very latest dispatches from the meme wars.
Readers will come away from The Constitution of Knowledge
not just concerned about the mess we’re in, but also with new ideas
as to how we might dig ourselves out of it.”
—Neal Stephenson, author of Snow Crash and Fall; or
Dodge in Hell
“Why can't we have shared facts anymore? The most profound and
useful answer is contained in this book. Jonathan Rauch shows us
how it is that societies ever come to know things. It is only after
we appreciate the miracle of knowledge production (the
“constitution” of knowledge) that we can understand the tragedy
befalling us now, as key institutions and practices decay. This
book is a magnificent integration of psychology, epistemology, and
history. It is among the three or so most important books I have
read in the last five years. It is a joy to read—deep insight after
deep insight, embedded in playful writing, about one of the most
important problems of the 2020s.”
—Jonathan Haidt, Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership,
NYU-Stern School of Business; author of The Righteous Mind;
co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind
“Long one of the country’s wisest and most honest voices,
Jonathan Rauch has written a hugely valuable and necessary book, an
illuminating exploration of the flight from fact. If, as the Gospel
of John put it, the truth shall set us free, then count Rauch among
the liberators.”
—Jon Meacham, historian; author of His Truth Is Marching On:
John Lewis and the Power of Hope
“Thanks to a global epidemic of nihilistic trolling,
manipulative disinformation, and addictive outrage, modern
democracies are facing an existential challenge: it's not merely
that their citizens don't agree on politics, they don't agree on
the nature of truth itself. In The Constitution of
Knowledge, Jonathan Rauch offers an original definition of this
epistemological crisis, as well as a range of innovative solutions.
It’s no exaggeration to say that this is a book that anyone who
cares about truth and democracy needs to read.”
—Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive
Lure of Authoritarianism
“Twenty-five years ago, Jonathan Rauch’s Demosclerosis
ignited interest in the problem of government immobilized, like
Gulliver among the Lilliputians, by thousands of threads of
transactions on behalf of factions. Now this singularly talented
analyst addresses an even more dangerous problem—the collapse of
shared standards of truth. He is a James Madison for this era, a
framer of a Constitution of Knowledge.”
—George F. Will, author of The Conservative Sensibility
“In what could be the timeliest book of the year, Rauch aims to
arm his readers to engage with reason in an age of illiberalism.
Nothing is off limits in this ingenious work which builds on his
Kindly Inquisitors. Anyone curious about the state of American
discourse and culture will devour it.”
—Juliana Rose Pignataro, Newsweek
“Mr Rauch’s book is a manifesto for liberals and eccentrics,
which explains how carefully the great, distributed
knowledge-making network has been assembled, how enduring it has
proved—yet how fragile it seems.”
—The Economist
"In 'The Constitution of Knowledge,' Jonathan Rauch makes a
convincing case that we still need our institutions of expertise
and the people who work for them. . . . Mr. Rauch’s defense of the
constitution of knowledge is an insightful and important reminder
of the real goods produced by expertise."
—The Wall Street Journal
"It’s a great book, truly important in the pantheon of defenses
of free speech, free thought, and the commitment to truth, the
perfect counter to post-truth claims on the left and populist truth
claims on the right. Destined to be a classic, in the tradition of
John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty.”
—Michael Shermer,
Publisher Skeptic magazine,
Presidential Fellow Chapman University, author
of The Moral
Arc and Giving the Devil His
Due
- Title: The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth
- Author: Jonathan Rauch
- Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
- Print Publication Date: 2022
- Logos Release Date: 2022
- Pages: 280
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9780815738879, 9780815738862, 0815738862, 0815738870
- Resource ID: LLS:9780815738879
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T04:21:20Z
Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer of The Atlantic. His previous books include Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought.