THE FUTURE OF DISCOURSE

TECHNOLOGY, AUTONOMY, AND THE CRISIS OF PUBLIC REASON

The 21st Habermas Colloquium and the 12th Colloquium on Philosophy of Information were interdisciplinary spaces for discussion and critical resistance in the face of contemporary challenges facing public reason. By interpreting and updating Jürgen Habermas's thought in the Brazilian context, the Colloquia sought to connect theory and practice, problematizing the inequalities, exclusions, and symbolic disputes that mark our public sphere.

Within this horizon, we addressed our social urgencies and also our historical conflicts, engaging in situated reading. In 2025, the Colloquia proposed as their central theme - The future of discourse: technology, autonomy, and the crisis of public reason - provoking reflections on the role of language and communicative action in times of digital platforms, information bubbles, algorithms, and artificial intelligence, which render subjects invisible and erode the democratic fabric.

In a scenario of misinformation, hate speech, and extreme polarization, it becomes urgent to ask: what is the place of discourse in the construction of democratic understandings and in deliberative politics? Discussing Habermas in Brazil is not about repeating concepts, but rather translating them into distinct contexts, far from Europe, in discussions that possess forces and powers that permeate our reality, especially from the perspectives and voices of peripheries and territories in conflict, which destabilize the rhetoric of supposed social harmony defended until very recently in Brazil, revealing that the idea of consensus silenced deep structural tensions and reproduced idealized images, such as that of the cordial subject.

The apparent conciliation in Brazil masks persistent deep inequalities and erases the active presence of social conflicts. Therefore, confronting social problems requires breaking with the idyllic vision of a harmonious society in which conflicts are hidden. Rational problematization is Habermas's wager for the formation of a critical public opinion, capable of forming discourses oriented towards building understanding between subjects. In this way, the Colloquia establish themselves as spaces for discussion and construction, in which the possibility of making discourse not only a diagnosis of the crisis, but also a tool in the search for solutions is considered. The journey opens paths for public reason to be not only defended, but reinvented, based on practices that resist, epistemologies that do not remain silent, and ways of life that, even under siege, still insist on being words.

In this scenario, researchers from the humanities and social sciences, education, and technology submitted and presented their work. The Colloquia affirm themselves as plural spaces of listening, publicity, and discourse as transformative social practices. The publication of the Proceedings of the Colloquia is another step towards the rational and democratic reconstruction of society.

Rio de Janeiro, November 7, 2025.

Clovis Ricardo Montenegro de Lima

Coordinator of the organizing committee