“Truth,” “lies,” and beyond : epistemological prerequisites for a constructive political discourse

Abstract

Building on methodical constructivism, the paper examines the differences between trans-subjectively founded (objective) reality, merely intersubjectively agreed (social) reality, and subjective reality in the narrow sense, and refutes the social constructivist view according to which every representation of reality only offers a distorted image of reality, so that all representations of reality stand side by side on an equal footing. Admitting that socially constructed reality is necessarily selective and therefore an interpreted (meaningful) reality, the paper argues that truth vs. falsehood is not the only criterion by which a construction of reality can be measured. Although the discourse about meanings cannot be a discourse about whether they are true or false, constructions of reality can nonetheless be questioned for their appropriateness for constructive problem solving. Political discourse, however, is all too often not about problem solving, but about gaining power, maintaining power, and using power in order to enforce one’s own positions. Appropriateness then gets replaced by mere expediency, and populist politicians drive this to a perfection in which their careless handling of truth is only the tip of the iceberg. At the base of the iceberg, there is the refusal of coexistence and the destruction of reasonable common ground, and the primary question that arises for social research is that of social pathologies that help populists’ (subjective) reality to become shared by (at least) parts of society.