The Obsolescence of Enlightenment

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.