Public Reason in Crisis: Kantian Practical Philosophy and Digital Disinformation

The contemporary proliferation of disinformation—amplified by social media architectures and algorithmic filtering—poses a fundamental challenge to Kant’s conception of public reason. While access to information has become instantaneous, the conditions for the verification and autonomy of judgment have eroded, producing epistemic dependence, social fragmentation, and political manipulation. This paper offers a Kantian critique of these conditions by examining how the practical faculty of judgment operates when truth is obscured and communicative spaces are colonized by digital technologies. Drawing on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and political writings, I argue that disinformation undermines the purposiveness and autonomy central to rational agency by transforming individuals into passive receivers rather than active co-legislators of meaning. I show how Kant’s ideas of the public use of reason and the kingdom of ends illuminate the paradoxical condition of digital isolation—where constant connectivity coexists with diminished civic capability. Finally, I suggest a Kantian model of epistemic responsibility and communicative ethics that can counteract contemporary information disorder by restoring the moral purpose of rational beings and enabling conditions for a viable civil society.