Modern Sophism…
Post-Truth, the End of History and a Will to Power
“Virtually all ideologues, of any variety, are fearful and insecure, which is why they are drawn to ideologies that promise prefabricated answers for all circumstances” …
— Jane Jacobs
“Our way must be: Never knowingly support lies! Having understood where the lies begin (and many see this line differently) — step back from that gangrenous edge! Let us not glue back the flaking scales of the Ideology, not gather back its crumbling bones, nor patch together its decomposing garb, and we will be amazed how swiftly and helplessly the lies will fall away, and that which is destined to be naked will be exposed as such to the world.” …
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Live not by lies (1974)
“If you are ignorant of [what Sophist really is ], you cannot know to whom you are entrusting your soul — whether it is to something good or something evil”…
— Socrates
Logos
Lo·gos
the divine wisdom manifest in the creation, government, and redemption of the world and often identified with the second person of the Trinity
reason that in ancient Greek philosophy is the controlling principle in the universe
Sophism
ˈsɒfɪzəm
a clever but false argument, especially one used deliberately to deceive
In a recent interview, the United States 2024 Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr brings together a sense of coherence to the unfolding reality of the last few years since the Pandemic.
An excerpt from the interview follows:
“In the spring of 2020, all of the liberal democracies in Europe, in North America, Canada, United States, Australia, and also in New Zealand suddenly pivoted and imposed what I would call totalitarian controls.
…An attack on civil rights beginning with free speech.
And our country went quickly from free speech to do you close all the churches for a year without any scientific citation or public process?
And you shut down jury trials which is protecting the Seventh Amendment without any (there is no pandemic exemption in the United States Constitution, and I don’t think there is one in Britain either).
And then they closed all the businesses, so they (that’s the property rights protected by the Fifth Amendment). They closed the businesses without any due process or just compensation.
… The lockdowns and social distancing mandates also subordinated the freedom of assembly, which is also part of the First Amendment.
… And then there was all these track & trace and these kind of intrusive Government, these Government intrusions on our private rights that conflicted directly with the Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unwarranted searches & seizures. Suddenly you had to give your private medical records to leave the house or to go into businesses.
And so, I suddenly felt a companionship among people all over the World. Even people who were, whose political posture up until the beginning of the Pandemic, had been absolutely antithetical to my own.
Suddenly I found myself in a common cause with these leaders all over the World that were willing, who were showing the courage to stand up to these, what I would call, totalitarian lockdowns”…
-Robert Kennedy Jr, 2024 United States Presidential Candidate
The very essence of Western Civilisation had emerged through the synthesis of Judeo-Christianity with Ancient Greek Philosophy.
“Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
A “search for truth” and Logos.
“Whenever a person strives, by the help of dialectic, to start in pursuit of every reality by a simple process of reason, independent of all sensuous information — never flinching, until by an act of the pure intelligence he has grasped the real nature of good — he arrives at the very end of the intellectual world”…
— Plato
The Ancient Greek Philosophers of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle emphasised the pursuit of knowledge through reason, critical thinking and dialogue.
They sought to understand the World and human existence through observation, open inquiry and critical reflection (contemplation).
At its core was a profound spiritual dimension.
“The genuine coherence of our ideas does not come from the reasoning that ties them together, but from the spiritual impulse that gives rise to them” …
– Nicolas Gomez Davila
The search for truth was a relationship between Man and God (the Divine).
A higher metaphysical realm of reality where the souls originate and to which they can return after death.
“God is truth and light his shadow”…
- Plato
A dialectical process of discovery between the Primacy of Human Conscious (Man) and the Primacy of Existence (Mother Nature & the Divine).
Platonism and Ancient Sophism
“Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods. And the one man that dares to tell the Truth, is called at once a lunatic and fool”…
— Plato
As outlined in The Public Sphere: Dialectic & Rhetoric, Plato’s process of understanding the nature of reality, which includes the transcendental & metaphysics, was in distinct contrast to the Sophists, such as Protagoras, who focused on subjective materialism and an individualistic understanding of truth.
“Man is the measure of all things, of the reality of those which are, and of the unreality of those which are not” …
— Protagoras
The Sophists in Ancient Greece undertook the role of educating and teaching the skills necessary for the practice of a functioning democracy by providing a process for a community to reach a consensus on Collective Truths.
Greek Philosopher Plato was sceptical of the Sophists and their teachings of rhetoric on building stronger arguments through language, narratives and persuasion rather than revealing a deeper objective metaphysical stance.
Sophists viewed truth as a relative concept — a subjective process — an Umwelt.
The truth was derived through whatever a community with various opinions convinced each other was true through the process of rhetoric.
According to Plato, Sophists were self-proclaimed wise men ( Sophia, meaning wisdom) who charged fees to educate the aristocracy about morality, speechcraft and the art of persuasion.
In contrast, Plato pursued a quest for an objective Philosophical Truth that emphasised the existence of a reality beyond the physical realm — the Metaphysical.
He believed that true knowledge and understanding could be attained through reason and contemplation of the forms (abstract & perfect concepts), which represented the unchanging essences underlying the world of appearances.
“Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
Plato posited the existence of two realms: the sensible world, which is the world of appearances and the physical senses, and the intelligible world, which is the realm of forms or ideas.
According to Plato, the sensible world is a mere reflection or imperfect copy of the intelligible world, where the eternal and unchanging form and ideas exist.
Plato argued that the true nature of reality could be apprehended through reason and philosophical inquiry rather than relying solely on sensory perception.
The philosopher’s task was to engage in a dialectic and, through contemplation, grasp the transcendent truths of the forms.
Note: – Aristotle extended this through the concept of Phronesis, which can be understood as a practical wisdom that enables individuals to make morally and ethically informed decisions by considering the broader context and consequences of their actions. Phronesis is associated with ethical leadership, requiring an ability to navigate complex moral dilemmas and make decisions that promote the common good. It involves a combination of intellectual capabilities, such as critical thinking and empathy, as well as practical skills in judgment, deliberation, and discernment.
Modern Sophism
Hannah Arendt, a German-born American historian and political philosopher, was one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.
Profoundly shaped by her experience in Nazi Germany, she first-hand experienced and saw the horrors of totalitarianism and the erosion of civil liberties, persecution of minority groups and the destruction of democratic institutions.
Throughout her career, she sought to understand the nature and dynamics of power, authority and political systems and, in 1951, published a book titled The Origins of Totalitarianism that attempted to synthesise and explore the complex social, political and economic conditions that gave the rise to totalitarian regimes particularly in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia through the course of the 20th Century.
Regimes that would ultimately result in the 20th Century becoming a New Dark Age in human history, with hundreds of millions of people killed through global conflict (e.g. Two World Wars) and ideological totalitarian regimes (e.g. Genocide).
“The most striking difference between the ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality. In other words, one destroyed the dignity of human thought, whereas the others destroy the dignity of human action. The old manipulators of logic were the concern of the philosopher, whereas the modern manipulators of facts stand in the way of the historian. For history itself is destroyed, and its comprehensibility — based upon the fact that it is enacted by men and therefore can be understood by men — is in danger whenever facts are no longer held to be part and parcel of the past and present world, and are misused to prove this or that opinion.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
In her book, Hannah Arendt identifies how the evolution of sophistry from Ancient Greece to Modernity has gradually transitioned from sophists applying their techniques of rhetoric and persuasion in shaping the ideas of the Human Mind and a World of Abstraction (Idealism & Truths ) to using their techniques to reshape physical reality (Hegel’s Second Nature, Kantian Utopia’s and Ideology ), our Human Embodiment and a World of Existence (Materialism, Embodied Existence & Agency).
Communism, Fascism, Socialism, Trans-Humanism, Scientism, Technocracy, Globalism and ultimately, Totalitarianism are all ever-present phenomena in our Modern & Post Modern Society that reflect the ideas of modern-day sophists.
Furthermore, Science which had initially been a practice of discovery and contemplation (i.e. revealing Man’s relationship with God), was now in Modernity seen as a “means to an end” and an instrument of power and control.
Ideas that 20th Philosopher Martin Heidegger explored in his 1954 book The Questions Concerning Technology and covered in the recent article Negation: Technology and the Anti Environment.
Given this Gestell — mode of enframing and understanding — that underlies technology, it was inevitable that by the early decades of the 21st Century, the Industrial Age concept of Precision Engineering would be extended into realms of non-ergodic emergent living complex entangled systems.
Geo-Engineering, Genetic Engineering, Bio-Engineering, and Artificial General Intelligence.
A Fourth Industrial Revolution.
A Cartesian World View where the Mind, Body and World were literally Mechanical Machines.
Everything, including humanity and nature, was a standing reserve — a Bestand — or — as orderly resources for technical application.
But was this way of perceiving reality a sophism?
An ontological philosophical error.
The recent article Adrift: The Crisis of Modernity & Post-Modernity highlighted the ever-growing cognitive dissonance.
The meta-crisis was one of an absence of higher-order metaphysics (a World of Being) and the increasing orientation of Humanity towards the Primacy of Human Consciousness (Logic — a World of Thought), Ego (Conscious Self) and Nominalism.
Atheism, Secular Liberalism and Materialism.
Monadic characteristics and dyadic thinking.
Despite our bounded rationality, the subjectivity of the human experience (umwelt) and the non-ergodic complex entangled nature of our existence.
Despite the Primacy of Existence.
Despite the eternal nature of the Human Condition.
“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits”…
— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
The End Of History
“For Hegel, freedom was not just a psychological phenomenon but the essence of what was distinctively human. In this sense, freedom and nature are diametrically opposed. Freedom does not mean the freedom to live in nature or according to nature; rather, freedom begins only where nature ends. Human freedom emerges only when man is able to transcend his natural, animal existence and to create a new self for himself. The emblematic starting point for this process of self-creation is the struggle to the death for pure prestige”…
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man
As Hannah Arendt articulates in her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, modern sophism enables reality to become a process of human creation and persuasion via rhetoric ( i.e. communication of Semantic Signs).
“The transition from signs that dissimulate something to signs that dissimulate that there is nothing marks a decisive turning point”…
- Jean Baudrillard
Humanity could now shape its own destiny by being able to transcend the eternal nature of the Human Condition and our fallibility.
It was primarily an atheistic and anthropocentric philosophy where Gods were no longer worshipped.
It was The End of History and the Last Man — the title of Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book — which presents the case that the rise of liberal democracies and the collapse of the Soviet Union had resulted in humanity reaching the end point of its ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western Liberal Democracy as the final form of Human Government.
“The old manipulators of logic were the concern of the philosopher, whereas the modern manipulators of facts stand in the way of the historian. For history itself is destroyed, and its comprehensibility — based upon the fact that it is enacted by men and therefore can be understood by men — is in danger whenever facts are no longer held to be part and parcel of the past and present world, and are misused to prove this or that opinion”…
— Hannah Arendt
But did Truth and the objectivity of knowledge that was previously sourced from the Primacy of Existence still matter?
“History is not history unless it is the truth”…
– Abraham Lincoln
Was it really the end of history?
“You should not honor men more than truth”…
- Plato
On 12 February 1974, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a prominent writer and critic of the Soviet regime, was arrested by the Russian authorities.
Solzhenitsyn was known for his powerful literary works, including One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago, which exposed the harsh realities of life under Soviet communism.
The arrest of Solzhenitsyn came after years of pressure and censorship from the Soviet government due to his outspoken criticism.
His works were banned in the Soviet Union, and he faced constant surveillance, harassment and even imprisonment.
Solzhenitsyn’s arrest and subsequent exile cemented his status as a symbol of resistance against totalitarianism and brought international acclaim to his literary works and the plight of dissidents in the Soviet Union.
He became an influential voice in the fight for human rights and a powerful critic of Soviet communism.
On the same day of his arrest, Solzhenitsyn released the text of “Live Not by Lies.”
In the text, Solzhenitsyn equates “lies” with ideology and the illusion that human nature and society can be reshaped to predetermined specifications.
It was literally a re-awakening to the importance of the philosophical ideas that Plato and Socrates had explored some ~2,300 years earlier.
The importance of metaphysics, man’s relationship with God and spirituality.
The ever-present risks of Sophism.
The symbiosis between the Primacy of Human Consciousness and the Primacy of Existence and the importance of contemplation & discovery in revealing the truth.
Solzhenitsyn urged Soviet citizens as individuals to refrain from cooperating with the regime’s lies.
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion, fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
― Hannah Arendt ,The Origins of Totalitarianism
It was a plea towards taking the step towards spiritual independence.
By many marching together on this path of passive resistance, the whole inhuman system will totter and collapse.
Whilst his 1971 perspectives were reflections on what had unfolded during his life in the Soviet Union, a subsequent speech he gave at Harvard University in 1978 titled A World Split Apart was a scathing critique of the moral and spiritual crisis he observed in the world, particularly in the Western context, and called for a reevaluation of values and a return to fundamental human principles.
Democracy simply could no longer flourish in a Post-Truth World.
Modern sophism.
“A “post-truth democracy” […] would no longer be a democracy”…
— Jürgen Habermas
Will to Power
“Democracy represents the disbelief in all great men and in all elite societies: everybody is everybody else’s equal, ‘At bottom, we are all herd and mob” …
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“For spirit alone does not make noble. Rather, there must be something to ennoble the spirit. What then is required? Blood”…
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men? — This world is the will to power — and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power — and nothing besides!”…
― Friedrich Nietzsche
The majority of early Age of Enlightenment thinkers retained their spiritual orientation at the dawn of the Scientific and Industrial Revolution.
Similar to the Ancient Greek Philosophers, they embraced the logocentrism and symbiotic relationship between the Primacy of Human Consciousness and the Primacy of Existence as a way to reveal the “light that illuminates”.
A process of discovery and contemplation.
However, as explored in Synthesis, this dynamic started shifting by the mid to late 1850s post Charles Darwin’s book The Origin of the Species.
A theory for the evolution of complex living species.
“The most powerful natural species are those that adapt to environmental change without losing their fundamental identity which gives them their competitive advantage”…
- Charles Darwin
Until that time, the word Science (s) was largely viewed as reliable, official knowledge — for example — theology and philosophy were forms of Science.
However, by the 1870s, a fracture began to emerge between the rational and experimental enquiry into nature — a redefined version of the Sciences — and — the Literary and Artistic production — of the Arts.
Two Cultures.
The breakthroughs in the nature of new knowledge via astronomy, energy, physics, geology and evolutionary biology gave this “new” form of Science the currency via its utility, power to transform reality and prestige to challenge the established paradigm.
This reconstituted form of Science had now justified its right to control natural resources — social (e.g. education), economic, political and ideological — and reshape Nations to embrace the opportunities presented by the Industrial Revolution.
Friedrich Nietzche — Will to Power and Übermensch
“Even today, many educated people think that the victory of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior truth of the former — although in this case it was only the coarser and more violent that conquered the more spiritual and delicate. So far as superior truth is concerned, it is enough to observe that the awakening sciences have allied themselves point by point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but point by point rejected Christianity”…
— Friedrich Nietzche
“Our way is upward, from the species across to the super-species. But the degenerate mind which says ‘All for me’ is a horror to us” …
― Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche was a 19th-Century German philosopher, cultural critic, and scholar whose work had a profound influence on various fields of thought.
His provocative ideas questioned traditional moral, religious, and philosophical beliefs and were influenced by the emergence of Science and Darwinism.
His writings explored the nature of human existence, concepts of morality, the role of religion, the nature of power and will, and the potential for individual self-overcoming ( Übermensch).
Nietzsche proposed a radical reevaluation and transformation of traditional moral values as a means to overcome what he saw as the limitations and harmful effects of traditional morality.
He argued that these moral systems, particularly those founded in Judeo-Christian ethics, were based on what he called “slave morality”.
He believed that these moral systems had inverted the natural order of values by championing qualities such as humility, selflessness, and meekness as virtuous while condemning qualities associated with power, strength, and assertiveness.
The transvaluation of values, as proposed by Nietzsche, involved a process of overturning these prevailing moral norms.
Nietzsche believed that the prevailing moral framework stifled individual potential and creativity, hindered personal growth, and led to a suppression of vital instincts and motivation.
Instead, Nietzsche advocated for a “noble morality” or morality of the “Übermensch” (often translated as the “overman” or “superman”).
The Übermensch represents an ideal, liberated individual who transcends conventional morality and embraces his or her own power and will to create a meaningful existence.
The transvaluation of values seeks to establish a new moral framework that affirms life, celebrates human potential, and embraces qualities such as self-affirmation, self-mastery, and a creative and affirmative approach to existence.
A Will to Power — Science and Technology
“Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology”…
- Martin Heidegger
By the early 20th Century, the Primacy of Human Consciousness, coupled with the application of Science to new Technologies, had increasingly been gripped by a Will to Power.
Building on the new ideas, moral values, and Übermensch of Nietzsche.
Darwinism, coupled with Nietzscheism and a Hegelian Dialectic as a framing of progress ( a Philosophy of History ), became the driving force for the development of a Technology Society and Technology System.
“Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment but also to modify man’s very essence. The milieu in which he lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometres an hour, and he goes a thousand. He was made to eat when he was hungry and to sleep when he was sleepy; instead, he obeys a clock. He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a world of stone. He was created with a certain essential unity, and he is fragmented by all the forces of the modern world.”
― Jacques Ellul
Scientism, Technocracy, Totalitarianism, Neo-Liberalism, Neo-Conservatism, Marxism and Communism have become the new vernacular of the 20th Century.
“Scientistic dogmatism (is) science viewed as exclusive of all other forms of knowledge, so that all the problems that cannot be analysed by modern science in terms of measure and verification are declared to be pure “nonsense” …
— Augusto Del Noce
Conclusion
“You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality”…
- Ayn Rand
So what are some of the potential implications and risks of a Post-Truth Society anchored in Modern Sophism and a Scientific Technocracy?
A Society that is increasingly post-truth, where objective truth is disregarded or manipulated in favour of subjective opinions ( propaganda, dogma, ideology & sophisms) and personal beliefs, can have significant societal implications, including inter alia :
Deterioration of Objective Reality: Post-truth environments can erode the concept of objective reality itself. This blurring of reality can have profound implications for the functioning of society and, ultimately, human survival.
Sense of Coherence: An erosion in humanities Sense of Coherence including Meaning, Manageability and Comprehensibility. An erosion in Human Well-Being.
Erosion of Trust: Post-truth environments erode trust in institutions, experts, and even basic information sources, which can ultimately lead to a Legitimation Crisis
Social Political Structures: A post-truth society gravitates towards totalitarianism and other forms of collectivism such as Marxism, communism, socialism, technocracy, and globalism that move away from Plato’s notion of the individual (understanding the self or one-self) as contained in his dialogue titled Parmenides.
Science – The essence of the Scientific Method is the interplay between the Primacy of Human Consciousness and the Primacy of Existence. A process of discovery and contemplation. A post-truth society that increasingly gravitates towards the Primacy of Human Consciousness leads to Scientism and, ultimately, the destruction of the Scientific Method. Instead of “nature checking the maths”, Peer Reviews and Social & Political Consensus become the basis for truth claims.
Will to Power, Übermensch & New Moral Values – Nietzsche’s ideas of the Primacy of Human Consciousness and Ego (Conscious Self) fundamentally transformed the moral values of society away from the traditional Judeo- Christian values and qualities such as humility, honesty, perseverance, selflessness, and integrity as virtues. Science and Technology become instruments of power and control where “the end justifies the means” (The Prince — Niccolo Machiavelli). A Technology Society and Technology System.
Weakening of Democracy: A healthy democracy relies on informed citizens being actively engaged and participating in a Society where decisions are made based on accurate information. In a post-truth society, the democratic process can be undermined as misinformation and propaganda can shift public opinion and distort the decision-making process.
Polarisation and Divisiveness: In a post-truth society, people often gravitate toward information that confirms their existing beliefs or biases, leading to echo chambers and an increase in polarisation. This can hinder constructive dialogue and contribute to social fragmentation.
Spread of Misinformation: Post-truth environments are fertile ground for the spread of propaganda, misinformation and disinformation.
Diminished Critical Thinking: In a post-truth environment, critical thinking skills can erode. When truth becomes subjective and relative, the ability to evaluate information objectively and discern fact from fiction becomes challenging. This hampers rational good decision-making and problem-solving, hindering societal progress.
Impact on Policy and Governance: Policy decisions based on misinformation or alternative facts can have severe consequences. Without a shared understanding of reality, crafting effective policies and addressing societal challenges becomes more difficult. This can lead to ineffective governance, exacerbating existing problems and preventing meaningful solutions.
“One basic truth can be used as a foundation for a mountain of lies, and if we dig down deep enough in the mountain of lies, and bring out that truth, to set it on top of the mountain of lies; the entire mountain of lies will crumble under the weight of that one truth, and there is nothing more devastating to a structure of lies than the revelation of the truth upon which the structure of lies was built, because the shock waves of the revelation of the truth reverberate, and continue to reverberate throughout the Earth for generations to follow, awakening even those people who had no desire to be awakened to the truth” …
— Delamer Duverus
“I am wiser than that man. Neither of us probably knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he does when he does not, and I do not and do not think I do”…
— Socrates
