This month an undergraduate student told me his parents were using the pandemic to persuade him to avoid philosophy as it could not prevent or solve real emergencies. I told him to let them know that we find ourselves in this global emergency because we haven't thought @@ -19,9 +29,9 @@ Though philosophers can't solve an ongoing emergency---philosophy was never meant to solve anything---we can interpret their signs through a "philosophy of warnings." Although this philosophy probably won't change the views of my student's parents, it might help us to reevaluate our -political, environmental, and technological priorities for the future. +political, environmental, and technological priorities for the future.
-Like recent philosophies of plants or +Like recent philosophies of plants or [[insects]{.underline}](http://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-philosophy-of-the-insect/9780231175791), which emerged as a response to a global environmental crisis, a "philosophy of warnings" is also a reaction to a global emergency that @@ -38,9 +48,9 @@ emergency, even one whose coming has been [[announced]{.underline}](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/experts-warned-pandemic-decades-ago-why-not-ready-for-coronavirus/) for decades. But why haven't we been able to take these warnings seriously? Before tackling this question, let's recall how warnings have -been addressed philosophically. +been addressed philosophically.
-Examples of warning philosophy can be traced back to Greek mythology and +Examples of warning philosophy can be traced back to Greek mythology and Plato\'s *Apology*. Apollo provided Cassandra with the gift of prophecy even though she could not convince others of the validity of her predictions, and Socrates warned the Athenians---after he was sentenced @@ -54,9 +64,9 @@ disaster upon disaster. In line with Hannah Arendt's warnings of the reemergence of totalitarianism after the Second World War, Giorgio Agamben began his book on the current pandemic with "A Warning": biosecurity will now serve governments to rule through a new form of -tyranny called "technological-sanitary" despotism. +tyranny called "technological-sanitary" despotism.
-These examples illustrate the difference between warnings and +These examples illustrate the difference between warnings and predictions. Warnings are sustained by signs in the present that request our involvement, as Benjamin suggests. Predictions call out what will take place regardless of our actions, a future as the only continuation @@ -66,9 +76,9 @@ present signaled by alarming signs that we are asked to confront. The problem is not the involvement warnings request from us but rather whether we are willing to confront them at all. The volume of vital warnings that we ignore---climate change, social inequality, refugee -crises---is alarming; it has become our greatest emergency. +crises---is alarming; it has become our greatest emergency.
-Indifference towards warnings is rooted in the ongoing global return to +Indifference towards warnings is rooted in the ongoing global return to order and realism in the twenty-first century. This return is not only political, as demonstrated by the various right-wing populist forces that have taken office around the world, but also cultural as the return @@ -90,9 +100,9 @@ transparent, direct, and genuine. "The quickness of social media, as Judith Butler [[pointed out]{.underline}](https://www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times), allows for forms of vitriol that do not exactly support thoughtful -debate." +debate."
-Our inability to take warnings seriously has devastating consequences, +Our inability to take warnings seriously has devastating consequences, as recent months make clear. The central argument in favor of a philosophy of warnings is not whether what it warns of comes to pass but rather the pressure it exercises against those emergencies hidden and @@ -103,14 +113,14 @@ loss, and commodification of our lives by surveillance capitalism. These warnings are also why we should oppose any demand to "return to normality," which signals primarily a desire to ignore what caused this pandemic in the first place. A philosophy of warnings seeks to alter and -interrupt the reality we've become accustomed to. +interrupt the reality we've become accustomed to.
-Although a philosophy of warnings will not prevent future emergencies, +Although a philosophy of warnings will not prevent future emergencies, it will resist the ongoing silencing of emergencies under the guise of realism by challenging our framed global order and its realist advocates. This philosophy is not meant to rescue us *from* emergencies -but rather rescue us *into* emergencies that we are trained to ignore. - +but rather rescue us *into* emergencies that we are trained to ignore.
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