Amid a flurry of crises and existential threats, our ability to interpret the world around us and heed warnings about the future has never been more vital, writes Santiago Zabala.
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 philosophically enough.
The increasingly narrow focus of experts this century has prevented us from addressing problems from a global perspective, which has always been the distinctive approach of philosophy. This is evident in the little consideration we give to warnings. Too often these are discarded as useless or insignificant—much like philosophy—when in fact they are vital. 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.
Like recent philosophies of plants or insects, which emerged as a response to a global environmental crisis, a “philosophy of warnings” is also a reaction to a global emergency that requires philosophical elucidation. Although the ongoing pandemic has triggered this new stance it isn’t limited to this event. Nor is it completely new.
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