The Interesting Relationship Between the Enlightenment and Modern Alternative Facts
Society is living in a broken distortion of the Enlightenment. However, to consider how to move forward with Enlightenment principles, one must determine whether Enlightenment principles are worth keeping in the first place. Therefore, to start, Enlightenment must be defined. If the definition of Enlightenment is to emerge from nonage, then the ability to think for oneself is commendable. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. However, to get out of nonage for Enlightenment thinkers appears contingent on relying principally on the supremacy of rationalism. If a priori reason is infallible and universal, as Kant says, then taking it to its endpoint, every question in science and society has an unassailably correct answer. Why? Because if the reason to get to that question is universal and infallible, then that entails the answer be universal as well. This leads humans to overextend the reach of reason.
The issue with this is shown in the distinction between math and other a priori knowledge. Humans are fallible and hopelessly imperfect. The reason why math is universal for all humans is that math has strict bounds, that any fallible human can adhere to. However, other a priori thought has no strict outer bounds like math and is only restricted to valid and sound justification. However, given humans are imperfect, they are more likely to think they have valid justification, when in fact they may not. As a result of this, as Leibnitz posits, humans will very rarely reach a priori thought. This is an issue because reason is implied to be infallible by Enlightenment thinkers, and therefore, knowledge claims noted in such reasoning are treated necessarily as infallible, and crucially, universal. Therefore, everyone who does not follow that reason is wrong. This is an underlying factor behind our post-truth world.
We live in a political culture that often values alternative facts over empirical and objective facts. For example, elements on the far-right value conspiracies like Jews controlling the world and, on the left, the Russia hoax still holds strong. Empirical fact may prove these theories wrong, but that does not matter to these theories’ adherents. That is because these alternative facts are made through reason, faulty as it is. The element of belief that is still present in these alternative facts are also covered by post-hoc rationalisation, because reason is viewed as the end-all justification, not faith as it used to be in the medieval era. Alternative faith, so to speak, was a lot easier to disprove, due to established tradition having a say in the correct interpretation of faith. Reason however, has no doctrine to live up to, while also having a public conception as the only necessary justification (regardless of the reason’s validity) — Enlightenment principle calling it infallible and universal. As a result, adherents of alternative facts do not realise the faulty nature of their reason. Therefore, anyone who does not agree with them and shows them evidence otherwise is to them, simply misguided, not correct. Thus, no one is willing to let go of their own personal “infallible” reason and see truth. This leads to the abundance of alternative truths. This is also apparent through history. The French Revolution, based on Enlightenment principles, established the Cult of Reason, the state-sponsored atheistic religion. It did not matter to the adherents that their conception of reason could be wrong, because they believed that their reason was universal and unassailable. Although the Enlightenment is not singlehandedly responsible for this nor current issues, the emphasis it places on the supremacy of reason has made this issue worse.
Humans are still living in a world undergirded by the supposition that rationality is infallible, a vestige of the Enlightenment. The rise of populism and emotion-based appeals is a reaction to the world of alternative facts created by the supremacy of reason. People are left disoriented by the sheer amount of different narratives, and in turn, try to look to safety. Populism plays on this fear and frames these different disorienting narratives as the fault of the elites in society. This creates a negative feedback loop, where alternative facts justified by “infallible reason” pervade society, and in reaction humans move to populism, which in turn, creates even more alternative facts. The resulting alternative facts are justified through reason, which faulty or not, is seen by the theories’ adherents as universal and infallible, regardless of the veracity of that claim.
The Enlightenment was a reaction to centuries of religion seeming to control people. Our current situation is similar, except that it is not religion blurring information from the masses, but rather the sheer amount of alternative facts. The answer to this conundrum is not simple. A return to certain Enlightenment principles is important to the degree that we should encourage people to be free thinkers and not buy into pre-determined narratives. This, however, should not be an extension to the idea that reason is infallible. This is because such a belief would only serve to give reason a connotation of infallibility, a negative position.
