Language, truth, and freedom in the digital age: digital idolatry and the crisis of interiority

Abstract

This article examines the contemporary crisis of language in the digital environment as a structural transformation of human freedom. It argues that the corruption of language goes beyond a merely communicative problem and, instead, points to an anthropological disruption of interiority. The concept of "digital idolatry" is proposed as an interpretive framework for understanding new forms of symbolic and psychological dependence mediated by social networks. Drawing on philosophy of language, philosophical anthropology, and contemporary social theory, this paper contends that the dissociation between language and truth undermines personal self-determination, fostering mimetic identification and affective heteronomy (Pieper, 1992; López Quintás, 2015). As a counterpoint, Ignatian pedagogy is examined, not as an immediate normative solution, but as a historical model of interior formation in which language, discernment, and freedom are structurally integrated (Loyola, 1997; O'Malley, 1999). The originality of the proposal lies in articulating a diagnostic framework – digital idolatry – with a historical-contrastive analysis of interior formation, thereby bridging contemporary social theory and the tradition of Ignatian pedagogy. The article concludes that restoring the ontological function of language as a mediation of truth constitutes a necessary condition for the recovery of freedom in the contemporary digital context.