What is truth today? And what role does it play in our public and private life? In her new essay, the philosopher Gloria Origgi tries to answer the question that, silently, hovers over these confused times
What is the truth? More than a century has passed since this concept was “put at the door” by the salons of philosophy and science, yet not a day goes by without millions of people asking themselves the fateful question. But then, what are we talking about today, after a century of arguing against the truth, when we talk about “it”? What role does it play in our life, in public discourse, in the collective project of building a common world that represents the facts in the best possible way? The latest investigation by the philosopher Gloria Origgi starts from these questions, which delves into the cacophony of voices that say everything and the opposite of everything (about everything) trying to find common ground that does not continually crumble under our feet.
Although today it has taken on a real political connotation, the “war” for the truth (and against it) is not new. It began with Western philosophy and is the same one that Plato fought against the sophists, the sellers of uncertainty who subverted the consciences of citizens by preventing them from contemplating the harmonious agreement between mind and facts. Today, philosophy is much more skeptical about the existence of truth as something outside of us, yet this has not disappeared from our discourses and our concerns: it is the basis of our political positions, our decisions to act, our morals. But also of our prejudices.
But truth and politics are built together and there are very different ways of building them. Some are sustainable with the organization of our societies and our minds, with globalization and the development of information technologies; others, however, are not.
Alternating references to current events and references to the great names in the history of philosophy, Origgi traces the evolution of the concept of truth to date, trying to understand what triggered the short circuit in the transmission of knowledge within the civilization “more informed than always”. Then tries to identify the conditions on which to (re) build a meeting point between increasingly irreconcilable positions.
