Get Out Of ‘Deception’ And The Search For Truth

Get out of ‘deception’ and the search for truth

Different perspectives that bother have emerged throughout history. Authors, thinkers, researchers have impacted at various times with their beliefs, postulates and their way of doing science. In the following essay, I intend to link the central theme with these visions that appeared in time to understand issues that concern us as a society.

To begin, I think it is important to make a distinction between those authors who recognize the existence of an objective truth and its possibility of knowing it (Socrates, Plato, etc.), And on the other hand, authors (such as Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Derrida, etc.) that they are skeptical of that thought, and prefer to rely on concepts such as subjectivity, contingency, constructivism (and deconstruction).

First, by placing ourselves in classical thinking, we find the first group of authors, such as Plato and Aristotle, among others. Plato, a disciple of Socrates, considered that knowledge was virtue. Following Sabine (2015), Plato discriminated against true knowledge (unique, immutable, rational) of appearance, opinion or "doxa" and misleading illusion. According to this, it was necessary to differentiate between the intelligible world (of the true being) and the world of appearance. In that sense, he had the belief that there was an objective good, possible to know through research or logic.

Following the same line, Sabine (2015) refers to Aristotle, who advocated an empirical methodology, for the real and scientific.

He believed that rationalism was progressively oriented towards empiricism, and that is why he mentioned that reason, which distinguishes the good of evil, needed from observation. Another issue that Sabine (2015) refers to Aristotle, is that he postulated that there were beings destined to obey and others to send "by nature". That nature was teleological, everything existed for a certain purpose. There, the author’s certainty of the presence of an undeniable and objective truth can be observed again.

However, despite the importance of the ideas of these authors and others with similar ideas, throughout history, other thinkers have been developing partial or completely different perspectives.

In this way, I consider it necessary to place ourselves in the current context, in the postmodern era, in order to understand these new positions and theories, which in my opinion help to understand social, cultural, political, economic, economic issues of our time, and give us a formdifferent from facing local and world problems. In this postmodernity, the binary, the objective, the existence of a unique truth, to which Plato and Aristotle and others referred to, is questioned.

Following Jameson (1985), postmodernism cannot be taken as a coherent whole "given that the unity of this new impulse (…) does not occur in itself, but in the same modernism to which it tries to displace". The writer makes a differentiation with modernism by mentioning that “the great modernisms were based on the invention of a personal, private (…) organically linked to the conception of a unique self and a private identity, a single personality and individuality, ofThe one that can be expected to generate your unique vision of the world and forge your unique style (…). Today, however, from different perspectives, (…) we all explore the notion that this kind of individualism and personal identity is a thing of the past;that the former individualist individual or subject has died (…) ".

Following this line, for Vattimo (2000), we can talk about postmodernity since the modernity to be completed: “Well, in the hypothesis that I propose, modernity ceases to exist when – for multiple reasons – the possibility of continuing to talk aboutHistory as a unitary entity."

Nietzsche (1873), in that sense, mentions in one of his texts: “There was once a star in which cunning animals that have invented knowing. It was the most arrogant and liar minute (…) ".

Citing Vattimo (2000), "Nietzsche, in effect, has shown that the image of a rationally ordered reality on the basis of a central principle (…) is only a" insurance "myth of a still primitive and barbaric humanity: theMetaphysics is still a violent way to react to a situation of danger and violence (…) ".

According to Nietzsche (1983), the truth is “an army of metaphors, metonymy, (…) in a word, a sum of human relationships that have been enhanced, (…) and that, after a prolonged use, to a people seemfixed, (…) truths are illusions (…) ".

In this way, these issues mentioned by postmodern authors, help us account for aspects that condition the subjects when evaluating different options to answer questions that compete as a society, setting the example of binarity as a characteristic ofModernity, which does not let us understand the possibility of other alternatives.

In addition to this, Vattimo (2000) adds that “there has been another great decisive factor to dissolve the idea of history and end modernity: namely, the emergence of the communication society."That is, the emergence of the mass media. "These means (…) have been the determining cause of the dissolution of the" central views "or according to Lyotard" great stories "."

Today, we live in a globalized world, where these media play an important role in building our identities, to relate, to look for solutions to local and global problems. This is what Bauman (1999) refers, when he uses the concept "liquidity" as a metaphor to refer to the nature of the current phase of history.

According to Castells (2010), globalization “is the process resulting from the capacity of certain activities to function as a real time unit at planetary scale. It is a new phenomenon because only in the last two decades of the twentieth century a technological system of information, telecommunications and transportation systems has been constituted, which has articulated the entire planet in a network of flows in which the strategically dominant functions and units convergeof all areas of human activity ".

In that sense, it could be said that various aspects of reality affect the construction of our ways of living and taking choices. Our experiences, our interpretations, influence us. Subjectivity, contingency is presented in each subject.

In the era of globalization, of the mass media, of postmodernity, of new revolutions, the information comes to us with such rapidity and in a unclear way, that it confuses us, and can cause us to make wrong decisions, withoutThe possibility of choosing the best strategic and patient option.

In this regard, when talking about postmodernity, we must mention that its beginning coincides with the end of colonialism and imperialism. In this way, we can mention the impact of the postcolonial perspective, which Sara Castro-Klarén (1996) understands as a deconstruction of the great narratives originated in the colonization and that still remain in various ways. “This‘ theory ’tries to examine the contact processes in which the colonized is handled within resistance, accommodation, reproduction, mockery and appropriation of discursive devices aimed at reducing it and/or producing it as‘ other ’."

Citing Vattimo (2000):

"Once the idea of a central rationality of history is missing, the world of generalized communication explodes as a multiplicity of" local "rationalities -ethnic, sexual, religious, cultural or aesthetic minorities, (…) that take the floor and leaveIf they are finally silenced and repressed by the idea that there is only a true form of humanity worthy of being carried out, with impairment of all peculiarities, of all limited, ephemeral individualities, contingent. (…) This process of release of differences is not necessarily the abandonment of full rule, the irrational manifestation of spontaneity: also the dialects have a grammar and a syntax, even more, they do not discover the grammar itself until they acquire dignity and visibility. The liberation of diversities is an act by which they "take the floor", they are presented, that is, they "put themselves in form" so that they can be recognized;something totally different from an irrational manifestation of spontaneity. (…) Living in this multiple world means to make experience of freedom understood as continuous oscillation between belonging and detachment ”.

To conclude, I consider it necessary to account for the diverse perspectives that have been built and rebuilt throughout history, making special emphasis on issues such as deconstruction, postmodern, postcolonial, in order to understand (us) (although never inIts totality), understand our identity, in my case of Latin American, which continues (from) building day by day. In order to do so, it would be optimal.

We must be aware of what perspective we are standing and questioning it, getting out of that "deception" that Nietzsche speaks, understanding the incompleteness of reality. So, this is how that and all other perspectives will bother us even more. The question is who is willing to do it.