Mediatization, post-truth, and knowledge production about Covid-19 255 sophical-scientific method to the vigor of “knowledge built from experience and testimony” (OLIVEIRA, 2020, p. 82). As Oliveira (2020) observes, the Cartesian empiricism is not testimonial, it does not encourage the direct experimentation of reality, nor does it seek its legitimacy in the personal and moral authority of the scientist; it demands detachment, a hori- zontal cut that allows the confrontation of the spiritual subject with the world of objects. Throughout the 20th century, dissat- isfaction with the incorporeal Cartesian observer deepened, and the embodiment of the subject of knowledge7 was accentuated. The knowing subject thus became the living being himself, the subject of experience, increasingly understood as the only one authorized to produce knowledge about himself. The formulation “place of speech” was not yet explicitly used, but its basic meaning was already given: structurally oppressed subjects 7 As Descartes explained in Discourse on the Method (2005), “we cannot doubt our existence while we doubt.” The Cartesian thought – dubito, ergo sum (I doubt, therefore I am) – became a fundamental element of Western philosophy, as it intended to provide a determined basis for knowledge in the face of radical doubt. Although other knowledge could be the result of imagination, deception, or manipulation, Descartes claimed that the act of doubting one’s existence served - at the very least - as proof of the reality of one’s own mind; according to him, there must be a thinking entity - in this case, the self - for there to be a thought. A common critique of the saying is that it assumes that there is an “I” that must be thinking. According to this line of criticism, initiated by Nietzsche in The Gaya Science (2012), the most that Descartes had the right to say was that “thought is taking place,” not “I think.” First, by reversing Descartes’ axiom in “Sum, ergo cogito” (I exist, therefore I think), Nietzsche emphasizes that, in fact, a social ontology (which includes metaphysical, logical, linguistic, and conceptual elements) has been a condition that makes possible Descartes’ inference of human existence from such pre-established values. Here, Descartes seems not to have applied his methodical doubt entirely since, in arriving at his axiom, he excluded some pre-existing factors from being called into question. For Nietzsche, it leads to a critique of Descartes’ two starting points in his project: pitting reason against doubt to achieve certainty and the idea of con- sciousness as the condition of existence. Second, in stating “Sum, ergo cogito,” Nietzsche seems to establish this first point as a principle against which Des- cartes’ “cogito, ergo sum” is a possible saying for humans only as a superficial creation. In other words, Descartes’ claim is only possible because of his concept of a priori thought (cogito), already derived from a concept of existence (sum), which are equivalent to social constructions. Furthermore, both have a valid- ity only in the world of logic and language. Thus, Descartes does not question the conceptualization of thought, existence, consciousness, and so on. Even so, Nietzsche disagrees with Descartes’ cogito, not only because its metaphysical foundations are necessary to derive the certainty of human existence but also because he conceived a subject whose thought seems to be dissociated from the will of power and not a consequence of it.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjEzNzYz