Social and Value Meaning of the Distrust in Humanities Knowledge

Abstract

This article analyses the urgent issue of the growing distrust of humanities knowledge. This problem is important both for those who create, systematize and broadcast humanities knowledge and for social actors whose legitimacy of actions is based on humanities knowledge. Moreover, this issue is of particular significance to those involved in public administration and education. Trust in knowledge is characterized by the recognition of its truth in the epistemological sense and of its positive meaning in the axiological sense. From this point of view, the social distrust of humanities knowledge can be explained by the socio-economic processes that generate alienation, which forms an objective basis for distrust. Narrow specialization due to the deepening division of labour, as well as technicism, consumerism and the priority of information and information technology give rise to the distrust in humanities knowledge as an expression of truth. Specifically, this is manifested in the lack of trust between wielders of power and bearers of humanities knowledge, between representatives of technical and humanities knowledge, and between actors of humanities knowledge itself, as well as in society’s deepening distrust of scholarship in general. On the whole, the integral social meaning of the growing distrust in humanities knowledge lies in the increasing subordination of humans to modern sociotechnical systems, whose elements they are becoming. The axiological component of distrust of humanities knowledge is related to its value meanings. Firstly, humanities knowledge necessarily includes value components, which causes distrust among social actors who are guided by different or opposing ideas. Secondly, humanities knowledge is inherently pluralistic, reflecting the manifoldness of human existence. Since the social and value determinants of distrust in humanities knowledge are intensifying in modern society, the article concludes that this process is objective. The results of the study may have a positive impact on the practical and cognitive activities of social actors involved in interaction causing trust and distrust.