The old era of post-truth

Post-truth has become the buzzword that explains everything (and nothing). The term is used to denounce a type of mass manipulation, largely perpetrated through the tendentious dissemination of data (taken out of context or directly falsified), using sophisticated and uncontrollable technology that gives them an appearance of objectivity. A battery of unfounded arguments that impact the subject's mood and condition their actions. And yet, the misnamed "post-truth" is older than truth itself.

"Post-truth" is older than truth itself

BeforePlatónthe philosophical quest would theorize and elevate the concept of truth to an ideal dimension, accessible only to intelligence, and his masterSócratestime passed debating in the agora with the so-called "sophists," masters of oratory likeGorgiasorProtágoras, more interested in persuading their audience than in conceiving pure, universally valid notions. It is to one of this lineage that Socrates addresses himself in the overture of theApologyof Plato.

With a first-rate theatrical stroke, intensively exploiting the mechanism of ellipsis (by referring to an event known to all but not detailed more than retrospectively, from its own response) Socrates affirms: "I do not know, Athenians, the sensation you have experienced from the words of my accusers. Certainly, under their effect, I myself have been on the verge of not recognizing myself; so persuasively did they speak. However, so to speak, they have said nothing true."

Even if the tools we have today achieve a completely new amplification, incomparable to other eras, the construction of discourses that exalt emotions -to tip the balance to the desired side- is not precisely a product of the 21st century. In the origins of European civilization, we find that same tendency, in the form of a dialectical tension that does not merely confront truth and falsehood, but rational truth and appearance of truth. "Opinion," so valued today, is comparable to a volatile and insubstantial judgment in which -according to the words of Parmenides, one of Plato's references- "no true faith is possible."

FALSE ENLIGHTENED CONSCIOUSNESS

From the paradigm of Greek wisdom, it is intuited that the urgency to express an opinion about everything fertilizes the field of post-truth. Between antiquity and the postmodern era, Thomas Hobbes warned how, along with words and the meaning we usually give them, one must always weigh the disposition and interest of whoever uses them, to complete their true meaning.

The author of Leviathan seems to anticipate some of John Searle's reflections, formulated centuries later through the categorization into "speech acts." The use of language is understood as an intervention in the order of things of the real, it disrupts it, and generates movement. That a lie repeated thousands of times -as it can be today through networks- takes on the appearance of truth, realizes it, or that personal disqualification spreads, even if it begins as a barely perceptible rumor, and of course unfounded, Rossini already sang it in "La calumnia è un venticello."

In fact, the intriguing tradition belongs to the history of Europe from its beginnings. Plato himself was a privileged witness to the manipulation that occurred in an era that, retrospectively, is seen as a golden age of the arts, of political tradition, and of the search for truth. The contrast with that era is not such, or not as radical as one might believe; and hence the "post-truth" carries within it a notable fallacy, if understood as a qualitatively distinct form of corruption.

A lie repeated thousands of times takes on the appearance of truth, or that personal disqualification spreads, even if it begins as a barely perceptible rumor, and certainly not founded.

The popularization of that term, nowadays, seems inseparable from a yearning of the inverse sign, the yearning for the gnoseological principle ideally conceived by philosophy. The paradox is a fact: truth is no longer believed in, unconditionally, but at the same time, the relativistic predominance of its opposite, massively inducible, is renounced. The critical diagnosis of "post-truth" is, therefore, nothing but the last gasp of a movement initiated many centuries ago, as has been explained.Peter Sloterdijkin theCritique of Cynical Reason. A movement that shows itself self-complacent and satisfied in its contradiction in the form of a "false enlightened consciousness."

 

MYTHICAL IGNORANCE

Let us remember that the oracle had indicated to Socrates that he was the wisest of all Greeks. He who claimed to know nothing knew something that specialists ignored. He knew of his own ignorance, of the inherent limitation in the particular acquisition of knowledge. Distrusting the accumulation of knowledge, he chose to transcend dogmas and opinions, through an incessant exercise of practical self-understanding, in search of what is just. Socrates wanted to realize himself from a coherence that made him unassailable, even oblivious to death, voluntarily assumed.

However, "to believe," to live private or collective illusions, is a human need, of timeless validity, that accompanies the search for certainties. The common phrase from myth to logos—the leap from irrational belief to a rationality free of belief—is itself mythical. Giorgio Colli explained how the birth of philosophy—that love for lost knowledge—takes place in the context of sacred enclosures dedicated to divination, which in turn evolves through Plato's "expressive reform." The longing to participate in an unmovable, eternal truth only transforms formally. And the cynicism implicit in post-truth characterizes its current version.

"To believe," to live private or collective illusions, is a human need, of timeless validity

An increasingly open, interconnected, and critical world in relation to grand narratives and ideologies—like ours—at the same time enables the space for the dissemination of unfounded opinions, which offer something different from the truth. A counter-discourse that imposes itself with paradoxical authoritarianism, as if the fact of being massively disseminated guaranteed its validity. This is a new and perverse turn, purportedly democratic, of that order of discoursethatMichel Foucaultdiagnosed in 1970, in his intervention at the Collège de France.

GLOBAL CAVERNS

Plato's narratives, in the form of dialogue, metaphorically speak of an exit from a cave, as in the well-known episode of The Republic. An ascent towards light fostered by the philosopher, which we can understand in parallel to Socrates' "maieutics" (the art of the midwife, which his mother had practiced), the method he applied to "form good men."

In the current scenario, given the presumed interconnection, the cave seems non-existent and the direct vision of reality is taken for granted, simultaneously longing for a higher degree of realization in digital virtuality, with immediate access in many cases.

The cave seems non-existent and the vision of reality is taken for granted, simultaneously longing for a higher degree of realization in virtuality

But with the suppression of the idea of formation from ignorance, saving oneself the painful and indeterminable transit between dissimilar realms –a properly philosophical movement, that of the search for truth, never fully satisfied– the individual of the 21st century seems necessarily exposed to the reign of post-truth, an open field for a new beliefwhich is proudly unaware of himself.