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.

***Image credits: Graham Caldwell, Compound Eye, convex and concave mirrors, steel, and hardware, 92 x 98 x 50 inches