New Digital Medias and Democracy: challenges to republican education

Abstract

The study addresses the challenges posed to education in a scenario where the operating mode of digital media presents difficulties in establishing a democratic way of life and shaping a common human world. It contextualizes the current sociopolitical landscape in light of modes of appropriation, criticism, and abandonment of rationality, highlighting practical consequences linked to certain postmodern positions. In an effort to recover ‘utopian energies’ present in the ideals of enlightenment modernity, both in education and politics, it relies on a reason anchored in linguistic intersubjectivity as a means of legitimizing social and political orders and as a foundation and guiding force in the process of educating new generations.