As Slavoj Žižek often
recalls, philosophy’s purpose is not to provide all
the answers but to ask the right questions. If the question
concerning warnings is one of them, it’s not only
because it invites us to envision a “philosophy of
warning” but also to interpret philosophy as a warning.
The ontological approach that distinguishes philosophy from
other disciplines both addresses problems from a global
perspective and also warns us of other disciplines’
narrow focus. “This word Being,” as Martin Heidegger
once said, “serves as a warning to us,” a warning
that reality is not made merely of beings and that its truth
is not exclusively what can be measured or verified. This
is also the meaning behind the theses of other thinkers
such as Michel Foucault (“Our society is one not of
spectacle but of surveillance”), Judith Butler (“Gender
is performative”), and Donna Haraway (“Technology
is not neutral”). These philosophers invite us to
think beyond traditional paradigms of politics, nature,
and science but also warn us of what might happen if we
don’t. It should not be surprising that warnings can
be traced back to Greek mythology, Confucianism, and Plato’s
Apology.
Warnings—not
to be confused with predictions—are not meant to convince
anyone but to invite us to reevaluate our priorities for
the future. While predictions call out what will take place
regardless of our actions, defining a certain future as
the only possible continuation of the present, warnings
instead point toward what might come and are meant to involve
us in the possibility of a radical break, a discontinuity
with the present signaled by alarming signs that we are
asked to confront. They allow us to think transcendentally
without losing sight of actual politically, socially, and
technologically urgent matters. Unlike predictions, which
belong to the domain of futurology—where the future
is forecast from the present trends in society—warnings
are hermeneutical; they strive to change the future by reinterpreting
the past. It is important to remember that warnings, unlike
predictions, are weak, vague, and subtle statements in the
form of announcements that require our interpretation. They
are meant to distance us from a future founded on knowledge,
rationality, and progress.
“Warning
philosophy” is more than a philosophical elucidation
of a global environmental emergency. It is the ontology
within which these emergencies exist. Nor is it completely
new. Like animals, plants, and insects, warnings have been
a topic of philosophical investigation for centuries. The
difference lies in the meaning they have acquired now. As
Richard Rorty would say, once we had prophets to tell us
to be alert to the warnings of the gods, but we secularized
that office into that of the philosopher, who, as one among
equals, advised us to use our imagination to interpret signs
because those are all we get. Even though we are constantly
warned about climate change, nuclear threats, or artificial
intelligence, we seldom listen—that is, interpret
and take action. But why?
The ongoing
global return to order through realism and the increasingly
narrow focus of experts prevent us from taking warnings
seriously. Too often, these are discarded as useless or
insignificant—much like environmentalists, artists,
and philosophers—when, in fact, they are vital to
understanding our spiritual predicament. This return is
not only political, as demonstrated by the various right-wing
populist forces that have taken office worldwide, but also
cultural, as shown by the return of some intellectuals to
Eurocentric Cartesian realism. Quentin Meillassoux, Christina
Hoff Sommers, and Markus Gabriel, among others, believe
that we can still claim access to truth without being dependent
upon interpretation. According to these thinkers, knowing
objective facts is enough to guide our lives despite our
different values, traditions, and interests. In this horizonless
philosophy, warnings are cast off as unfounded, contingent,
and subjective, even though philosophers and historians
of science such as Bruno Latour and Naomi Oreskes continue
to remind us that no “attested knowledge can stand
on its own” because only “the social character
of scientific knowledge makes it trustworthy.”
A society founded
on order, realism, and transparency—which have become
synonyms—will inevitably promote fake news through
antiestablishment and anti-intellectual stances but also
oppose those institutions meant to warn us. Donald Trump’s
recent cuts in the Department of Health and Human Services—which
canceled key programs from child support services to prevention
of disease outbreaks—are meant to strengthen a horizonless
society, that is, one without institutions, guarantees,
and authorities. The mistake of these naïve realists
and their leaders is to reject authority because it seems
arbitrary, threatening, and sanctioned only by institutional
powers. This prejudice—as Hans-Georg Gadamer pointed
out—does not take into consideration the difference
between “authoritative” and “authoritarian”:
the latter has not earned its authority and is concerned
primarily with power, order, and obedience; the former instead
earns its authority through a foundational consensus and
receives not so much obedience as trust.
After decades
of scientists and whistleblowers warning us about climate
change and classified government programs, among other issues,
it has become evident that facts are not enough to change
the course of history. This is probably why, as Naomi Klein
points out, at scientific gatherings, researchers have begun
to call on the general public to agitate for political change
rather than repeat the indisputable causes of global warming.
Klein is not telling us that researchers are turning down
science and becoming radical activists. Instead, they acknowledge
that warnings cannot simply rely upon their findings. The
inefficacy of truth inevitably raises the question of whose
and which warning we must listen to.
Jonathan Glazer’s
warning—regarding the danger of repeating another
genocide—in The Zone of Interest does not
have less validity than that of the Holocaust historian
Timothy Snyder, who begins Black Earth by making
a similar point: the “Holocaust is not only history,
but warning.” The difference between the two warnings
is not one of kind but rather of degree, intensity, and
depth. The truth of this genocide is not debatable—just
like the scientific evidence of climate change or Julian
Assange’s revelations—but whether we listen
and interpret its signs, messages, and meaning is. Glazer’s
warning works better than Snyder’s because pressure
prevails over accuracy in his movie. Whether a warning comes
from a filmmaker, historian, or scientist is secondary to
the intensity and pressure it exercises against hidden emergencies
because it aims to change the present.
Spending a day
without being warned about financial crises, biodiversity
loss, and a blackout is challenging. But it is more difficult
having to choose which warning to listen to. Contrary to
“trigger warnings”—which have become a
popular concept in American society that alert students
and consumers to traumatic educational or media content—“warning
philosophy” prioritizes those warnings that are repeatedly
ignored, such as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused
by the ongoing genocide; air pollution, which is responsible
8 million death globally; and preparations for the next
pandemic, which far-right populists seek to undermine. What
is at stake here is not only our future in terms of what
will happen if we don’t listen to warnings but rather
whether there will be a future at all in the genitive’s
radical subjective meaning. The future will belong to warning
philosophies, or it will not be at all in a horizonless
society.
