TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF POST-TRUTH IN MODERN SOCIETY

Abstract

The article presents a comprehensive socio-philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of post-truth as a structural condition of modernity, which has its own philosophical genealogy and specific social manifestations. The relevance of the study is determined by the unprecedented transformation of the mechanisms of social regulation: the traditional model, according to which the establishment of a fact entailed moral condemnation, has lost its effectiveness, which is particularly evident in the transformation of the perception of high-profile criminal cases, changes in geopolitical legitimacy, and the escalation of armed conflicts.

The authors proceed from the assumption that post-truth is neither a temporary deviation nor a consequence of technological changes alone, but rather represents an ontological state in which truth ceases to be an event capable of transforming social reality. The methodological framework of the study is complex in nature, combining an ontological approach (truth as aletheia), discursive-narrative analysis (the transformation of public scandals), comparative-historical method (the genealogy of post-truth from modernity through postmodernism and metamodernism to emptiness), and categorical analysis (the distinction between truthfulness, sincerity, and emptiness).

Particular attention is paid to the analysis of paradoxical phenomena of contemporary political identity: the solidarity of Western LGBT activists with Hamas (the slogans “Queers for Palestine”, “Gays for Gaza”), despite its homophobic policies, as well as the rapid decline of the Black Lives Matter movement after a period of unprecedented mobilisation. These phenomena become understandable only in the context of post-truth, where symbolic identification with the narrative of the “oppressed” prevails over the actual content of the policies of those with whom solidarity is expressed, and where emotional impulse, unsupported by structural changes, quickly loses its mobilising capacity.

The conclusions formulate the thesis that the escalation of armed conflict appears as a sublimation of the ethical vacuum: a society that has lost the ability to distinguish between good and evil in the public sphere transfers this ability to the sphere of military action, where the binary opposition of “us and them” temporarily restores the illusion of moral certainty. Classical question requires reformulation: the problem of modernity is not “what to do if God does not exist,” but how to live when truth has ceased to be an obligation, and the very question of truthfulness or sincerity has lost its social significance.