Tiempos de posverdad¿qué verdades son posibles en política?

Résumé

This article analyses the popular idea of “post–truth” as a discourse regime in which the true or false nature of facts becomes irrelevant in favour of emotional or political factors. Here, this issue is contextualized as part of one of the perennial problems in the History of Political Ideas: that on the delimitation of the possibilities of truth in political discourse. In this sense, it recovers some key reflections on the matter, such as the Socratic critic to sofism, the kind of objectivity that is possible in Social Science or the difference between facts and value judgements o the particularities of political thought. Moreover, several causes are suggested to explain the recent advances of post-truth: the radicalization of social conflict, the expansion of the democratic egalitarian principle, the digital technological revolution or the neoliberal boost to uncompromised individualism and the invasion of instrumental rationality into the lifeworld.