The Eclipse of Reason: On the Decline of Informed Political Debate

The modern political landscape, in Ukraine as elsewhere, appears increasingly shaped by a melancholy paradox. Never have citizens possessed such immediate access to information, nor such effortless capacity to express views. Yet rarely in recent history has genuine informed political debate seemed so impoverished. It is as though the instruments of enlightenment are being wielded in the service of something far darker. In place of the patient exchange of ideas between people of differing opinions, one witnesses a fracturing of discourse into tribes that shout across the void, confident only in their disdain for one another. The rise of populism, in its many contemporary forms, has not created this atmosphere but it has accelerated it, feeding off the very divisions it deepens.

The philosophers of the Enlightenment imagined a public sphere governed by reason. Citizens were to be liberated not only from tyranny but also from ignorance, and a democratic polity was to be sustained by the calm testing of ideas against argument and evidence. These aspirations were never fully realised, yet they offered a direction of travel. They implied that truth, while imperfectly grasped, was something that might be approached collectively by people willing to listen as well as speak. The assumption underlying this vision was that citizens would engage with one another in good faith.

In the early twenty first century that assumption appears increasingly fragile. Political debate has suffered a coarsening that would once have been associated with societies closer to civil collapse than to democratic modernity. Instead of sober engagement with a counterpart’s reasoning, it is now common to dismiss the counterpart himself as illegitimate or corrupt. Those with whom one disagrees are caricatured as enemies of the nation or enemies of the people, and the possibility of persuasion is replaced by the adrenaline of denunciation. The tone is less one of deliberation than of combat. It is difficult to avoid the impression that we are living through a sustained repudiation of the Enlightenment’s central articles of faith.

There are several causes of this decline, and none of them is simple. Yet a central factor is the transformation of the way in which people absorb news. Conventional news media, for all their faults, developed over time standards of verification, editorial oversight and a sense of institutional responsibility towards the truth. These standards were always unevenly applied, and sometimes violated, but they provided a framework in which facts could be contested without collapsing into anarchy. Editors took responsibility for what they published. Journalists accepted a duty to investigate with a degree of care. Readers understood that a process existed, however imperfect, that imposed restraint on conjecture.

Unedited social media has disrupted this equilibrium entirely. It has given a voice to many who would previously have been silent, which in itself is not an unwelcome development. The difficulty arises from the absence of editorial discipline, which allows falsehoods to circulate with extraordinary velocity. In the architecture of the large social media platforms, the provocative thrives over the accurate. Emotion spreads more quickly than analysis, and outrage more readily than consideration. Each user becomes both publisher and commentator, unbounded by training or responsibility. In such an environment the difference between news and rumour becomes progressively more difficult to discern, particularly for those who no longer consume traditional media.

This shift in the structure of public information has deep political consequences. Populist figures exploit the vulnerabilities of unedited platforms with remarkable dexterity. They bypass conventional scrutiny, speaking directly to supporters who receive their statements unmediated by journalists. Nuance evaporates, replaced by the stark simplicity of slogans. Complexity is taken as evidence of dishonesty. The institutions that once protected the integrity of public debate find themselves mistrusted or ignored. A leader may now construct her own ecosystem of truth, in which facts are subordinate to the emotional needs of the audience.

The result is a fragmentation of political reality itself. Groups of citizens inhabit parallel informational worlds, each convinced of the others’ malice or delusion. In such a setting the idea of a shared public sphere becomes untenable. One cannot debate with those whom one regards as fundamentally illegitimate, nor can one find common ground with people whose conception of the facts differs entirely from one’s own. In the absence of a common foundation, disagreement degenerates into insult and posturing. The Enlightenment rested on the hope that people might reason together because they perceived themselves as a community of inquirers. Today that sense of shared inquiry has been eroded.

There remains, nevertheless, a possibility of renewal. The decline of traditional media has left a void that is not easily filled, yet the need for trusted intermediaries remains. Societies might find ways to support independent journalism that adheres to high standards, perhaps through new funding models that preserve distance from both government and commercial pressures. Likewise, educators might place greater emphasis on teaching citizens to evaluate information critically, particularly online. These measures would not restore an idealised past, but they might slow the drift towards a politics of mutual hostility.

The ultimate challenge is cultural rather than technological. It requires citizens to recover the modesty that attends any serious engagement with the truth. To listen to opponents, to accept the possibility of personal error, and to treat argument as an invitation rather than an offence are habits of mind that must be cultivated. They do not emerge spontaneously. If contemporary societies are indeed witnessing an abnegation of Enlightenment values, then the response must be a deliberate effort to revive them. This cannot be imposed from above. It must begin with individuals who choose to conduct themselves with civility even when the atmosphere encourages the opposite.

There is a certain sadness in reflecting upon how far contemporary political discourse has strayed from the aspirations of the eighteenth century. Yet melancholy should not be mistaken for resignation. The Enlightenment was never a finished achievement. It was, rather, a project defined by the conviction that reason might guide public life. The present age, for all its noise and its anger, has not entirely extinguished that possibility. One may still hope that thoughtful debate will recover its place, and that citizens will once again find dignity in the difficult work of understanding those with whom they disagree.