Willingness to know in post-truth times

Abstract

The growing popularity of the term «post-truth» and the consolidation of the line of thought that is based on it beyond its political context, poses some educational challenges for our times. After having studied the general features of this kind of thought to which we refer when we talk about post-truth (a movement of relativisation that affects not only our knowledge of reality, but reality itself), we focus on the educational aspects involved in this phenomenon, looking into one that is entirely involved in the educational field: a certain neutrality or indifference, that can be characterised as insensitivity to truth, that the subject shows, and that can be interpreted as a lack of will, a decline, fragility or weakness of the desire for knowledge that currently affects Western countries. After reaching this diagnosis, we notice the need for a deliberate fostering of the desire for truth that goes beyond emotional reactions or pure curiosity, through a critical education of the will. This should be done in two complementary ways, which correspond to two kinds of will related to different human dimensions: will as lack and will as wealth. We highlight the fact that both kinds of will can be learnt and, therefore, should be taught, and we offer, finally, some guidelines in order to do so.