A Humanum Partner Feature

released 4/25/2025

According to Plato, writing is “a reminder to those that know.” In his critique of the medium of writing, Plato was concerned about its inherent contextual ambiguity regarding speaker, reader, and reality itself. In a 2020 article, D. C. Schindler draws on Plato to argue that in its very form, social media evidences a general contempt for logos — reason and language — which defines man. The way people share their thoughts and feelings on social media is abstracted from the context of a real speaker speaking to a real listener. This cheapens the “pseudo-intelligible bits” that are shared, Schindler says, but also — paradoxically — absolutizes them. The result is a profound disorder in communication. What is needed is to recognize, protect, and nurture the primary relationship between speaker and reality that is foundational to logos — to reason, language, and communication. The full title of the article is “Social Media Is Hate Speech: A Platonic Reflection on Contemporary Misology.”

This article is provided courtesy of Humanum and is read by Ken Myers. To download a PDF of this essay from Humanum, click here.

26 minutes

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