With the grand scheme of events, like the Brexit and the election of Trump to the presidency of the USA unfolding, it also brings into question the interplay of popular beliefs of the masses who had actually participated to ferment the same results and the dwindling “authority” of truth and facts as against the generation of the popular beliefs and convictions. This juncture of doubts and questions assumes immense significance because it forces one to go back in time, across centuries and ponder to visualize the horror expressed by Socrates being materialized in real terms, when he once had warned that, “false words are not only evil in themselves, but also infect the soul.” It is this contagiousness which calls for a moment of introspection for evaluating this era of the post-truth in general and politics of post-truth in particular. Where as philosophers like Socrates encountered instances and situations where lies would reign in the garb of pretentious wisdom, he had developed methods to engage with the other to know and through that seek the truth on the precondtion of acknowledging his own ignorance. Though Socratic ideas and methods would not suffice to break the psychological impasse imposed by explosion of relative informations and blind data on account of the revolution in the information technology, it can certainly help one to put things in perspective for better understanding which in turn can enable people to restore the lines of sincere engagements and work about their ways in the ocean of the post-truth in which truth is considered irrelevant.
Brexit, Critical thinking, Dialectics, Debate, Engagement, Information technology, Post-truth, Social media, Socrates
