Causes and Consequences of the Destruction of the Belief in the Attainability of Truth: Philosophical Reflections with a Historical Example

Abstract

The essay explains the necessity of mechanisms that maintain a certain homogeneity of beliefs in human societies that rely on cooperation and discusses several causes for the decline of contemporary societies’ belief in the attainability of truth and the reliability of science, one being the replacement of epistemology by the sociology of knowledge. It analyzes on purely conceptual grounds the deleterious consequences that this decline must have for the stability of democracies and ends by showing some parallels between the rise of Fascism and National Socialism and the current situation.

Keywords

• Decline of belief in truth
• manipulation
• sociology of knowledge
• crisis of democracy