Total Prostitution Of Lies For Factual Truth

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Hannah Arendt’s says, “the result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lies will now be accepted as truth, and the truth be defamed as lies, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world- and the category of truth vs. falsehood is among the mental means to this end- is being destroyed” (Arendt, 15). Her main point behind this quote is that we live in is a fake reality. The lies said behind the truth and the truth that is depicted as lies are what we take as the truth. In this tangle of lies and truth, we have lost the proper knowledge to actually understand what the reality is. We have created a fake reality based on each “truth” that has been presented. Day by day, more lies …show more content…
Plato focuses on the rational truth and opposes it with sophistry, whereas Arendt explores the differences between factual truth and associates it with lies. The Republic interprets Arendt’s view of Plato correctly. In the Republic, Plato discusses that a democracy is an unjust form of government because there are all these different voices that can be equally heard. This is because a just city doesn’t allow for these diverse beliefs. Diverse beliefs will corrupt the just city because it gives room for more perspectives and leads to others to side track from their actual purpose in the society. Plato isn’t concerned with the liar’s but more so with the speakers that don’t know what they are talking about because everything they say is opinion based. In other words, Plato’s main concern in politics is that a democracy is filled with sophists and whoever is the most persuasive. The problem with sophists is that the actual truth can never be uncovered because all the claims made are opinion-based. Plato mentions, “too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery, both for the private man and the city” (Plato, 564a). All these different opinions on different perspectives will lead to the corruption of the just city. With multiple views, the truth will get hidden and will be difficult to uncover and eventually everyone will be forced to think of these opinions as the truth. On the other hand, Arendt’s main worry is with the lies and how we get manipulated because we don’t really know what the truth is. Eventually the lie will become the truth in politics because of the way it is presented. The truth will become distorted because facts can be easily transformed into opinions. Arendt focuses her worries about the liars in the 20th century politics, whereas Plato looks at politics in reference to the

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