Post-Truth and Consequences

What is it about?

The problem of the role of truth in politics has recently become a subject of intense public and theoretical attention. The issue assumed gravity due to politically significant consequences of the recent recourse to deliberate misinformation in various political campaigns, a phenomenon now referred to as ‘post-truth’. The prevalent reaction to duplicity in politics typically assumes the form of a moralistic demand addressed to politicians that the requirements of truthfulness be observed. I argue that the attitude, which deserves the name of ‘alethic populism’, stems from a misconception of the nature of political activity, an error which I propose to call the ‘cognitocratic fallacy’. Against this, I stress that the neologism ‘post-truth’ was originally intended to refer not to the deliberate lies of politicians but rather to the attitude of the democratic citizenry who leniently accepts them. Also, against the claim that postmodern philosophers are responsible for abjuration of truth, I argue that the effect is rather an unintended consequence of persistent attempts to work out a definitive conception of truth. I also claim that political philosophy offers ambiguous and mutually contradictory views concerning the role of truth in politics. Against the moralistic attitude of alethic populism, and against the cognitocratic fallacy, I argue that making sense of truth in politics and the public life should be based on the concept of a cognitive régime of understood as a set of rules variously regulating the usage of words and concepts in various spaces of human life.

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Why is it important?

Widespread lies in current politics and the ensuing political damages provoke an attitude which may be called alethic populism. It is an adamant belief in the validity of truth and an unwavering demand that it be restored to, and respected, in political life. Alethic populism as a moralistic defence of truth is a progeny of a naïve belief in the unproblematic status of truth and is the ground on which many forms of populism forage. Alethic populists, believing in a moral dimension of truth, demand respect for truth, but usually only the one they profess themselves, not infrequently seeking in it a justification for exclusivist politics.

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