The Obsolescence of Enlightenment
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article analyzes why enlightenment-based media education systematically fails against extremist mobilization on social media. Drawing on Günther Anders’ “media philosophy” – the Promethean gap and the world as phantom and matrix – it shows this failure to be structurally conditioned by algorithmic public spheres that generate a threefold discrepancy: in understanding (algorithmic opacity), in feeling (affective manipulation), and in responsibility (diffuse attribution). Integrating platform studies, radicalization research, and affect theory, it develops a reflexive ideology critique that problematizes not only extremist content but the medial conditions of enlightenment itself – including its Eurocentric presuppositions. Drawing on Klafki’s educational theory, intercultural philosophy, and feminist epistemology, it outlines a post-enlightenment media education that works with affects rather than against them, reflects its performative paradox, and translates structural analysis into didactic practice.
DOI: 10.21243/mi-01-26-13
Author: Filk, Christian
Institution: Europa-Universität Flensburg
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7140046870
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