From a Platonic perspective, truth is independent of time. It remains the same, anytime, anywhere. But if we refer to an existential truth, and not to a metaphysical and absolute one, we must pay attention to timing. A posthumous truth stresses the instability of what we call the ‘identity’ or ‘meaning’ of a personal life, especially when it refers to a thinker. It is not an additional truth, but one which reshapes the sense of an existence from a new perspective. A posthumous truth appears as a revelation and it presupposes that something has been hidden during life. It therefore presents itself as a supreme truth, because it is the final one. It comes after all discourses that a subject enounced when he or she was alive. There is no way of opposing such an ultimate truth, because the deceased cannot defend another version of his life.

Moreover, a so-called posthumous truth plays on two registers because it mixes factuality and interpretation. It is usually based on facts, even if the definition of facts remains ambiguous. Something has been disclosed and then everything makes sense in light of this revelation. It presents itself as evidence and then retroactively modifies the meaning of past life. However, the constitution of these facts as a final truth remains a question of interpretation. For instance, the recent publication of Heidegger's Black Notebooks reveals his antisemitism (even if it was a ‘revelation’ only for his still-faithful disciples) and it definitively restricts his philosophy to an ideological reading. Another example is the publication of Simone de Beauvoir's correspondence with Nelson Algren, her American lover. The disparity between the ideas presented in her philosophical essay Le Deuxième sexe and the way she lived her overwhelming passion set off an aggressive reaction among her admirers, as if the revelation of these letters were the final version of her existence. We could also talk about Foucault's last seminar, Le Courage de la vérité, and the way he kept his disease strictly secret. A few years after he died, the writer Hervé Guibert revealed that Foucault had AIDS.

In order to question the meaning of posthumous truth, I would like to think about a more enigmatic situation regarding post-mortem revelation.