120 lines
7.1 KiB
Markdown
120 lines
7.1 KiB
Markdown
Title: The Philosophy of Warnings
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Author: Santiago Zabala
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Date: 29 January 2021
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<pre id="first_letter">
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</pre>his month an undergraduate student told me his parents were using the
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pandemic to persuade him to avoid philosophy as it could not prevent or
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solve real emergencies. I told him to let them know that we find
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ourselves in this global emergency because we haven't thought
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philosophically *enough*. The increasingly narrow focus of experts this
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century has prevented us from addressing problems from a global
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perspective, which has always been the distinctive approach of
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philosophy. This is evident in the little consideration we give to
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warnings. Too often these are discarded as useless or
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insignificant -- much like philosophy -- when in fact they are vital.
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Though philosophers can't solve an ongoing emergency -- philosophy was
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never meant to solve anything -- we can interpret their signs through a
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"philosophy of warnings". Although this philosophy probably won't change
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the views of my student's parents, it might help us to reevaluate our
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political, environmental, and technological priorities for the future.
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Like recent philosophies of plants or
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[insects](http://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-philosophy-of-the-insect/9780231175791),
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which emerged as a response to a global environmental crisis, a
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"philosophy of warnings" is also a reaction to a global emergency that
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requires philosophical elucidation. Although the ongoing pandemic has
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triggered this new stance it isn't limited to this event. Nor is it
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completely new. Warnings have been a topic of philosophical
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investigation for centuries. The difference lies in the meaning these
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concepts have acquired now. Before philosophy we had prophets to tell us
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to be alert to the warnings of the Gods, but we secularized that office
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into that of the philosopher, who, as one among equals, advised to heed
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the signs; to use our imagination, because that is all we got. The
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current pandemic has shown how little prepared we were for a global
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emergency, even one whose coming has been
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[announced](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/experts-warned-pandemic-decades-ago-why-not-ready-for-coronavirus/)
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for decades. But why haven't we been able to take these warnings
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seriously? Before tackling this question, let's recall how warnings have
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been addressed philosophically.
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Examples of warning philosophy can be traced back to Greek mythology and
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Plato's *Apology*. Apollo provided Cassandra with the gift of prophecy
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even though she could not convince others of the validity of her
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predictions, and Socrates warned the Athenians -- after he was sentenced
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to death -- that their inequity and mendacity undermined the democracy
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they claimed to honor. Against Gaston Bachelard, who coined the term
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"Cassandra complex" to refer to the idea that events could be known in
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advance, Theodore Adorno warned that any claim to know the future should
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be avoided. It is probably in this spirit that Walter Benjamin warned we
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should pull the brake on the train of progress as it was stacking
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disaster upon disaster. In line with Hannah Arendt's warnings of the
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reemergence of totalitarianism after the Second World War, Giorgio
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Agamben began his book on the current pandemic with "A Warning":
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biosecurity will now serve governments to rule through a new form of
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tyranny called "technological-sanitary" despotism.
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These examples illustrate the difference between warnings and
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predictions. Warnings are sustained by signs in the present that request
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our involvement, as Benjamin suggests. Predictions call out what will
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take place regardless of our actions, a future as the only continuation
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of the present, but warnings instead point toward what is to come and
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are meant involve us in a radical break, a discontinuity with the
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present signaled by alarming signs that we are asked to confront. The
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problem is not the involvement warnings request from us but rather
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whether we are willing to confront them at all. The volume of vital
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warnings that we ignore -- climate change, social inequality, refugee
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crises -- is alarming; it has become our greatest emergency.
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Indifference towards warnings is rooted in the ongoing global return to
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order and realism in the twenty-first century. This return is not only
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political, as demonstrated by the various right-wing populist forces
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that have taken office around the world, but also cultural as the return
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of some contemporary
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[intellectuals](https://arcade.stanford.edu/blogs/returning-order-through-realism)
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to Eurocentric Cartesian realism demonstrates. The idea that we can
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still claim access to truth without being dependent upon interpretation
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presupposes that knowledge of objective facts is enough to guide our
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lives. Within this theoretical framework warnings are cast off as
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unfounded, contingent, and subjective, even though philosophers of
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science such as Bruno Latour continue to
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[remind](https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Down+to+Earth%3A+Politics+in+the+New+Climatic+Regime-p-9781509530564)
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us that no "attested knowledge can stand on its own". The internet and,
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in particular, social media have intensified this realist view, further
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discrediting traditional vectors of legitimation (international
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agencies, major newspapers, or credentialed academics) and rendering any
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tweet by an anonymous blogger credible because it presents itself as
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transparent, direct, and genuine. "The quickness of social media, as
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Judith Butler pointed [out](https://www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times),
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allows for forms of vitriol that do not exactly support thoughtful
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debate".
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Our inability to take warnings seriously has devastating consequences,
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as recent months make clear. The central argument in favor of a
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philosophy of warnings is not whether what it warns of comes to pass but
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rather the pressure it exercises against those emergencies hidden and
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subsumed under the global call to order. This pressure demands that our
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political, environmental, and technological priorities be reconsidered,
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revealing the alarming signs of democratic backsliding, biodiversity
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loss, and commodification of our lives by surveillance capitalism. These
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warnings are also why we should oppose any demand to "return to
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normality", which signals primarily a desire to ignore what caused this
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pandemic in the first place. A philosophy of warnings seeks to alter and
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interrupt the reality we've become accustomed to.
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Although a philosophy of warnings will not prevent future emergencies,
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it will resist the ongoing silencing of emergencies under the guise of
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realism by challenging our framed global order and its realist
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advocates. This philosophy is not meant to rescue us *from* emergencies
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but rather rescue us *into* emergencies that we are trained to ignore.
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-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
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**Santiago Zabala** is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. His most recent book is *Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts* (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020). <http://www.santiagozabala.com/>
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