Post-Truth as a Mutation of Epistemology in Journalism

In recent years, many authors have observed that something is happening to the truth, pointing out that, particularly in politics and social communication, there are signs that the idea of truth is losing consideration in media discourse. This is no minor issue: Truth, understood as the criterion for the justification of knowledge, is the essential foundation of enlightened rationality. The aim of this article, based on prior research on social communication (especially as regards journalism), is to elucidate an explanation of this phenomenon, known as ‘post-truth.’ Because it is an epistemological question, the three main variables of the problem (reality, subject and truth) have been analysed by taking into account the manner in which digital social communication is transforming our perception of reality. By way of a conclusion, we propose that (a) the ontological complexity of reality as explained by the news media has accentuated the loss of confidence in journalism as a truth-teller, and that (b) truth is being replaced by sincerity, as an epistemological value, in people’s understanding of the news. The result, using Foucault’s concept of Regime of Truth, suggests a deep change in the global framework of political, economic, social and cultural relations, of which post-truth is a symptom.

Teaching History (An Enemy of the People)

“Teaching History” turns to An Enemy of the People, a play that brings to life the tension between a sole truth-teller and his community. It shows that this tension is only resolved in the main character’s commitment to break with the traditions of the town and, in a Nietzschean spirit, embrace a future-oriented educational project.

Linguistic image of an opposition journalist in the pragmatic perspective

The paper presents the linguistic image of an opposition journalist in the pragmatic perspective, i.e. taking into account the dominant image-making communicative strategies. The author defines the concept of a personal image and presents a model for describing a linguistic image. The strategic and tactical organization of the linguistic image of an opposition journalist is analyzed on two levels: communicative and textual (content). The communicative component is realized through a wide range of self-representative, phatic and fasciation strategies aimed at attracting the target recipient and involving him emotionally in the implementation of the discursive principle of dialogism. The content component is implemented through the strategy of discrediting and tactics of nomination, intensification, reductionism, fragmentation, as well as modeling the socio-political reality in the temporal aspect. As a result, the image of a categorical critic, an expert, an intellectual and truth-teller is created.

Truth-Teller–Liar Puzzles with Self-Reference

In this paper, we use commonsense reasoning and graph representation to study logical puzzles with three types of people. Strong Truth-Tellers say only true atomic statements, Strong Liars say only false atomic statements, and Strong Crazy people say only self-contradicting statements. Self-contradicting statements are connected to the Liar paradox, i.e., no Truth-Teller or a Liar could say “I am a Liar”. A puzzle is clear if it only contains its given statements to solve it, and a puzzle is good if it has exactly one solution. It is known that there is no clear and good Strong Truth-Teller–Strong Liar (also called SS) puzzle. However, as we prove here, there are good and clear Strong Truth-Teller, Strong Liar and Strong Crazy puzzles (SSS-puzzles). The newly investigated type ‘Crazy’ drastically changes the scenario. Some properties of the new types of puzzles are analyzed, and some statistics are also given.

Coda

In this book, I have tried to show that it is only with the rise of dramatic realism that the figure of the Cynic truth-teller begins to provoke sustained interpretive crisis, a crisis that takes shape in the sixteenth century and that goes on to drive key developments in our literary, philosophical and political history. Through my readings of Shakespeare’s plays, I have also tried to show that literature – along with its academic offspring, literary criticism – is uniquely positioned to diagnose the interpretive errors that consequently underwrite philosophical and political ideas about the means of achieving extreme critical agency. What these two overarching aims have in common is the critical methodology I develop in order to advance them, and I conclude this book by briefly commenting on the value this method holds for early modern studies in particular and for the discipline of literary studies in general....

The Realist Turn: Parrhêsia, Character and the Limits of Didacticism

Chapter 2 offers a new account of literary realism and its origins in early modern drama in order to explain why a crisis of character—both literary and ethical—begins to cohere around the figure of the Cynic truth-teller only in the sixteenth century. It argues that the proliferation of non-allegorical characters in early modern drama is the result of a new development in the protocols of literary didacticism, one in which literature can increasingly instruct audiences in the ethics of self-care by offering up to judgment the actions and outcomes of characters fashioned to be verisimilar to people. Moving into the seventeenth century and beyond, literary realism becomes fictionality’s dominant representational mode precisely because it serves as a virtual arena in which to exercise one’s practical wisdom (phronesis) about the ethical means and political ends of action.

Shakespeare and the Truth-Teller

The Truth-Teller makes the case that Shakespeare repeatedly responds to sixteenth-century debates over the revolutionary potential of Cynic critical activity—debates that persist in later centuries and that inform major developments in Western intellectual history. To live one’s truth may have been a radical (and controversial) proposition for ancient Greek democracy, but Shakespeare reveals it to be an equally vexed task for drama, which aimed both to represent political truths and warn against the dangers of over-identifying with the figure of the lone truth teller. The book contends that aspiring critics from the sixteenth century to the present cathect onto the figure of the Cynic because they mistake literary character for viable political formula. Shakespeare, the book argues, works to diagnose this interpretive error through his Cynic characterizations of Lear’s Fool, Hamlet, and Timon of Athens. Offering new ways of thinking about early modernity’s engagement with classical models as well as literature’s engagement with politics, The Truth-Teller insists upon the necessity of literary thinking to political philosophy.

Philosophy and politics in higher education

Purpose The purpose of this paper, which is drawn on Indonesian academic women’s experiences, is to examine the extent to which the aesthetics of existence or true life of women academics in relation to the truth telling, played out within the interaction between philosophy and politics, is affected by the application of NPM in research and publication productivities, and the way in which women academics are voicing their opinions toward this issue. Design/methodology/approach In total, 30 women academics across two geographical region (east and west) universities took part in this research, sharing their perceptions and the way they criticize this policy to the audiences (Indonesian government), framed within the concept of parrhesia (truth telling), parrhesiastes (truth teller) of Foucault and the pariah of Arendt. Findings Using semi-structured interviews, this research finds that women academics in Indonesian universities have shown discursive voices and stances to the extent to which they agree and oppose this policy, showing the patterns similar to those of parhesiastes and pariah. The implication of this study is addressed in this paper. Originality/value This research, via the lenses of Parrhesia and Pariah, finds several kinds of philosopher roles of women academics in Indonesian universities, such as apathetic philosophers or depraved orators and Schlemihl figure of Pariah, and Parrhesiastic philosophers of Socrates and a conscious figure of Pariah.

Chelsea Manning and the Politics of Truth-Telling

This chapter argues that reading Chelsea Manning as an outsider truth-teller, and developing a defense of outsider truth-telling, is important to our understanding of the relationship between democracy and truth more generally. Outsider truth-telling reveals problems with, and offers an important alternative to, our dominant understanding of truth and democracy, namely, that democracy is dependent on truth because it offers prepolitical stability for a society of diverse viewpoints. The chapter argues that this dominant view actually grew out of particular historical circumstances and is tied to a raced, classed, and gendered conception of truth-telling. In this context, outsider truth-tellers should be understood as crucial yet vulnerable figures in democracy, revealing from a position of social illegibility an unsettling reality that their societies need to see. This chapter calls democratic theorists to raise, thematize, and address, as central concerns for democracy, the predicaments and problems surrounding outsider truth-telling.