Q: The title of your new book, Signs from the Future: A Philosophy of Warnings, is thought-provoking. It suggests that we need to perceive — or rather, to listen to — these signs. What are these signs and to what extent are philosophy and art capable of listening to and interpreting these signs?

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SZ: Signs are warnings, that is, those weak and vague announcements we use to alert others of imminent danger, change, and also hope. The expression “signs from the future” belongs to Slavoj Žižek. At the end of his book The Year of Dreaming Dangerously he explains that they “are not constitutive but regulative in the Kantian sense; their status is subjectively mediated; that is, they are not discernible from any neutral ‘objective’ study of history, but only from an engaged position — following them involves an existential wager in Pascal’s sense.” Philosophy listens to these signs to the extent that they acknowledge that the world is not simply made of facts, objects, and representations. Today, it isn’t easy to meet an artist who will tell you his art represents objects or events in the world objectively. But you might find a philosopher who is certain to achieve this through a “new” ontology, even though nothing new occurs in philosophy. This is what I call in the book the “global return to order through realism,” which considers signs, symbols, and imagination unworthy of philosophical investigation. This is particularly evident in New Realism or Object Oriented Ontology. There are many other traditions and movements, such as deconstructionism, hermeneutics, and critical theory, which reject this return to Cartesian representationalism. These are the philosophies that not only enable listening to and interpreting signs but also contribute to resisting the political consequences of this global return, which are evident among far-right populist governments worldwide.

Q: In the introduction, you mention that your “philosophy of warnings is more than a philosophical elucidation of a global environmental emergency.” Nevertheless, ecological concerns are present in your work and your other books. How does your philosophy of warnings contribute to environmental thinking?

SZ: If my book devotes a significant amount of space to environmental crises, similarly to philosophies regarding animals, plants, and insects, it’s because warnings concerning our environment are often not heeded. However, the overall goal of the book is to explain why philosophy can only serve as a warning. Anyone who thinks his philosophical contribution is more than just a warning — and believes he can predict the future, for example — is probably a foundational thinker who believes we must submit to science, as John Searle often said. But philosophy is not a science. Philosophy serves as a warning of what will happen if we fail to heed science's warnings concerning climate change.

Q: How do you view the role of philosophy in withstanding the political consequences of this global return?

SZ: Philosophy can help to the same extent that the humanities contribute to widening our horizons. This very digital salon, Arcade, is a good example. Those of us researching or studying history, literature, or philology have made a choice which is also political, that is, meant to stir the various frames that are imposed upon us. A philosophy of warnings highlights how, for example, Trump's recent cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities — which will eliminate key programs essential to each state’s cultural infrastructure — are intended to foster a horizonless society, one without history, purpose, or meaning.

Q: You state that “philosophy is a warning.” At times, you seem to connect the idea of “warning” with Being, and even with the notion of event. You also recall Heidegger's assertion that “the word Being itself is a sort of warning.” Could you talk about the relationship between “warning,” “event,” and “Being”?

SZ: Warnings are where the “event of Being” takes place. This event is rare nowadays. The technological frame within which we live resists heeding warnings because they announce the possibility of an alternative, namely, an event that may occur. In the 21st century, as I explain in the book, the “greatest emergency has become the absence of emergency,” that is, where nothing emerges. Events — in the true meaning of the term — are infrequent. One reason for this is that we often fail to heed warnings. Let’s take the example of Trump's re-election. His re-election a year ago was not a surprise to those of us who had listened to the warnings about his re-election. The greatest emergency was the warning of his re-election, which we chose to ignore. His latest disruption is simply an emergency. Listening to the great emergency his re-election implied could have helped avoid the numerous emergencies we face now. This concept of absent emergency was also at the center of the exhibition I curated last year.

Q: You suggest that speaking of signs from the future involves adopting a non-foundationalist perspective, referencing thinkers like Gianni Vattimo, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler. How does this non-foundationalist horizon enable us to recognize and respond to warnings?

SZ: Let’s take Vattimo's “weak thought.” His philosophy aims to dismantle the powerful and oppressive structures of religion, politics, and philosophy. But to do this, he cannot assume weakening will ever end because God, for example, is not a concept that can be weakened once and for all. But the weaker the notion of God becomes, the higher our possibilities to live a more fruitful religious life. Warnings require a “similar horizon of understanding.” This is why in the third part of my book, I explain why we must prioritize the past over history, the “to come” (avenir) over the future, and listening over hearing to warn others, and “Be warned.”

Q: Can you distinguish the “to come” (l'avenir) as a concept that transcends “the future” in terms of its signs?

SZ: This distinction is crucial for understanding the difference between predictions and warnings. The future refers to what will take place after the present, as something programmable and predictable, but the “to come”, “avenir,” points toward what is to come (“a venir”), an alteration or disturbance that is unpredictable. This is why the future of warnings implies the possibility of alteration. However, there is no need for alteration in predictions, because the inevitable outcome they anticipate demands only our submission. The various warnings of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Beauvoir, and Arendt that I analyze in the book are meant to disclose this alteration.

Q: Why should we — as you suggest throughout the book — listen to warnings by artists rather than scientists? Who has the authority to warn us?

SZ: The mistake of those intellectuals who belong to the “global return to order through realism” is that they 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. 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.