post-truth

When words lose their meaning and their capacity to bind those who use them, neither democracy nor the rule of law can long survive.

Pretty soon, I'll be decomposing into phosphorous, calcium, and so on. Who else will you find to tell you the truth? All that's left are the archives. Pieces of paper. And the truth is... I worked at an archive myself, I can tell you first hand: paper lies even more than people do.

All history is one continuous pestilence. There is no truth and there is no illusion. There is nowhere to appeal and nowhere to go.

The most striking difference between the ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality. In other words, one destroyed the dignity of human thought whereas the others destroy the dignity of human action. The old manipulators of logic were the concern of the philosopher, whereas the modern manipulators of facts stand in the way of the historian. For history itself is destroyed, and its comprehensibility__ased upon the fact that it is enacted by men and therefore can be understood by men__s in danger, whenever facts are no longer held to be part and parcel of the past and present world, and are misused to prove this or that opinion.

What are the units of ontology really that I should be a part of a whole, but not be, in all my awareness, chiefly the whole unto itself?