Rereading the enlightenment, after (or against) the culture wars
Extract from Matthew Sharpe, The Other Enlightenment (Rowman & Littlefield, to appear Dec. 2022)
2016, the year of Brexit and the first ascent of Donald Trump, was also the year in which the term “post-truth” became a buzzword. Like all such half-popular, half-profound terms, “post-truth” is ambivalent. For some, it meant a culture in which political decisions were based on emotions, not facts or science. For others, it was a period in which politicians no longer needed to even care if what they were claiming was true. In another view, “post-truth” is what follows from a culture in which increasing numbers of citizens get their news selected by algorithms on social media platforms. These feed them what they “like”, not what may be true, or even attempting to be so. For yet others, “post-truth” announced the final breakdown of public trust in experts, when it came to everything from climate change to the sanctity of democratic elections. For all comers, what “post-truth” amounted to was a climate in which “everyone was entitled to their own opinion”. But no one could persuade others from different “filter bubbles” by appeals to reasons or evidence that their opinions were any better or worse. [i]