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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ Wehry (00:01.661)
Hello, I am PJ Weary, your host for Chasing Leviathan. And I have here today, Dr. Santiago, excuse me. I was gonna start over, that was so bad.
Santiago (00:12.418)
All right, all right.
PJ Wehry (00:19.357)
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viaduct. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Santiago Zabala. And we're talking about his book, Signs from the Future, a Philosophy of Warnings. He is a philosopher and the IREA research professor of philosophy at the Pomp and Fibro University. Dr. Zabala, wonderful to have you on today.
Santiago (00:41.368)
Thank you very much for inviting me.
PJ Wehry (00:44.15)
So tell me, Dr. Zavala, why this book?
Santiago (00:48.172)
Well, this book is basically like most books, at least I think most books are a consequence or an effect of my previous books. My previous book, at least the past 10 years, my two previous books have dealt with the problem of mostly of emergency, but not in Agamben's meaning of the term. I try to overcome Agamben and the whole state of emergency, a state of exceptional issue.
And I tried to complain to Heidegger that in the 20th century, 21st century, we live in a condition where, which is sort of my motto, my basic idea, that we live in it, know, since the 20th, basically since 9-11, we live in a condition where the greatest emergency we have is the absence of emergency. In other words, this does not mean that we just don't have emergencies in this century. Of course we had, we had 9-11.
PJ Wehry (01:39.665)
Mm.
Santiago (01:46.638)
We had the financial crisis in 2008, 2009, we had the pandemic. Of course, we have a lot of emergencies. The thing is that the biggest one we have, the greatest one we have, is the one that we don't really take care of them. We don't really confront them properly. And the paradigmatic example here, of course, is climate change. So that's a clear emergency that we do not tackle.
Philosophically, I've been trying to find out through Heidegger and through other philosophers how we can begin to confront them or how we can find a philosophy that in some ways can respond to what is absent. In other words, the greatest emergency we have is the fact that we don't answer that. And so this has taken me to, I guess this is, I have a lot of friends who are always asking me to write simpler books and books they can understand.
And I think it's a fair request, actually. And to comply with them to a certain extent, I realized that for the concept of warnings, it's a little bit like absence of emergencies. In other words, warnings are actually great emergencies, which are not here yet. In other words, when my physician warns me that I should eat healthier and stuff, he's basically telling me, well, there's a potentiality there for an illness or something.
And so he's warning me of something that will happen in the future. And so I realized that, well, the greatest emergency, the absence of emergency, well, a simpler way to talk about it is by talking about warnings, which is a concept that not that many philosophers have worked on. But through a sort of a big hermetic violence or a big rewriting of the history of philosophy, I decided to imagine that actually philosophy is a warning. And so I tried to develop this
PJ Wehry (03:42.429)
Mmm.
Santiago (03:43.798)
in the book to many authors that whoever has the patient to read the book would find out.
PJ Wehry (03:53.723)
Yes, and there's so many threads there I want to pull on. kind of start, have the book in three parts and the first part you have four chapters and it's philosophical warnings. And I feel like you're kind of rewriting that history. You're writing out what it means. know, we have murdered God, you know, starting kind of like this Nietzschean idea, the banality of evil, Hannah Arendt. Can you talk us through one, I want to make sure that people buy and read your excellent book.
know, obviously since this one's easier to understand too. But what is one way that you've kind of rewritten philosophical history so that we can think about it as a warning rather than just kind of like, this is something I learned?
Santiago (04:39.586)
Right. So, you mentioned Anna Anren, which she is the best example I have actually, because a lot of people have talked about her as a philosopher that has warned us about totalitarianism, about wars, and so forth. And so she is a good example because she is, she hasn't really talked herself about warning so much, but most of her books are meant to warn us. Now, the idea I have here is that
If we agree, and this depends on what philosophical school we come from, if we agree that philosophy is not a science, it's not a method, and as continental philosophers believe, philosophy has more to do with, well, we are engaged in society and the problems we discuss are part of society. In other words, we're not some sort of scientist locked in his laboratory. So if we agree with that, well...
and we think about how philosophy normally functions. I mean, you can read throughout the history of philosophy. It is not that hard to read it as a warning. In other words, when Nietzsche warns us and it's a warning, it's a threat, debatable, but when he tells us that God is dead and we want many gods to emerge, if you read that sentence as a prediction rather than a warning,
We can discuss the difference later. Well, it is a warning. is telling us, it's really telling us not something that has actually occurred. It's not that Nietzsche really believed that God has died in some moment in history. He doesn't believe that. What he does believe is the idea that of God that we have has actually ended. And if you don't believe that, don't accept that, well, he's actually warning us of what might happen if you don't do that. And then in the second part of the book,
the chapter that runs parallel to that one, explain, I return to fundamentalists and how they are the ones that still have not listened to Nietzsche's warning. And the same thing occurs with the other philosophers and Anne-Lena Lantz is a perfect example there because I use her in particular to discuss the problem not only of how populism has, our right populism and even authoritarianism has returned now. So we did not listen to her warning about that possibility and
Santiago (07:01.432)
She actually even talks about not only that sort of totalitarianism, but she actually warns us of the consequence that we have in the economy. She talks about even about actually very close to what was happening now with artificial intelligence, what would happen to the economy and to us if everything becomes that rationalized. So it is very difficult. I think it is difficult not to read them as philosophers that are warning us.
Because philosophy cannot really do much more than war. I mean, we don't tell you the truth, right? Philosophy deals with, love to search for truth, but philosophy that actually tells you the truth, I think it's something that, well, that's something that maybe for analytic philosophers or very traditional philosophers links to metaphysics. But for those of us that have tried to overcome metaphysics through Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, et cetera, et cetera.
PJ Wehry (07:36.55)
Yeah.
Santiago (08:00.002)
Well, philosophy cannot really give us the solution, but we can give you the big picture, right? We can offer the big picture, which is a big picture that is actually lacking now. think that one of the big problems we have today is not simply that we don't have that many philosophers, but that most philosophers have become experts, right? Specialists in something very particular. And I think the role of the philosopher, of course, we have to study and we have to be an expert in something, obviously.
that have to be useful to engage and to propose and to respond to the big problems that we have today. And, and this is one of the big points of my book, the biggest problem we have today, or let's put it this way, I think philosophy is supposed to ask the right question. We're supposed to find those questions that answers it for science, but philosophy is supposed to ask the big questions. And the big question today, I think is why don't
We listen to warning. That's the big issue we have now. And this is a serious problem because we don't listen to warning. And the problem is that, I mean, if you don't listen to philosophers, it's fine. It's no big deal. Nobody really listens to us anyway. That's fine. That's fine.
PJ Wehry (09:20.349)
I was not prepared for that. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah.
Santiago (09:22.158)
Well, but I do believe that it's not a big deal. let's, why don't we listen to scientists? Why don't we listen to climate? I mean, they give us all the data. I mean, it's pretty straightforward. We shouldn't, I mean, it should be quite straightforward. I mean, this is the data. mean, you really can't, I'm sort of a past modern philosopher. So I could tell you, data. Yeah, but still, let's take the data for the data. We're not doing that. We're not listening to warnings.
And so the big problem we have today is that we do not listen to the big warnings we have. mean, the pandemic. The pandemic was announced for over 25 years. That specific pandemic. We were not prepared. So this implies that a philosophy of warning is meant not... mean, a philosophy of warning and a true warning is not really meant to... A warning is not meant to have the truth.
A warning is more meant to pressure you. That's a big difference. I think that truth is not enough. So when I insist in the book that, and I do this through Greta Thunberg and many other examples, use it, know, truth is not enough. We need to be pressured. When your doctor, your physician tells you, you you should slow down on the drinking. Well, he's not really telling you
PJ Wehry (10:22.364)
Hmm.
Santiago (10:47.97)
He's telling you what will happen if you don't stop, right? So it's really pressuring you. It's not so much as, and the difference is happens when he tells you or when someone close to your brother or your sister, whoever, gets sick. That's when one changes, right? One changes when it touches you more at the sentimental level. So it is not a rational issue. It is more, it has more to do with feelings, has more to do with social relationships.
And this is what I think warnings are interesting because they sort of tell us the truth, but at the same time request from us a response that is not necessarily based on that truth. So too many philosophers and maybe too many I try to justify not only that philosophy is a warning, but that today is the moment we should be focusing on trying to answer and to respond to this warning. And we're not doing it. We're definitely not doing it
for those very simple and straightforward warnings that we have, as the ones coming from climate scientists, et cetera, et cetera.
PJ Wehry (11:56.231)
Yeah, if we're thinking about the way you talk about pressure here, would another way, and I just want to make sure that I'm tracking with you, would another way to talk about pressure to say that philosophy should have more of a rhetorical focus?
Santiago (12:11.182)
Right, philosophy should have more of a rhetorical focus. Philosophy should not try to convince us. For example, I like to make this example. Philosophy is not supposed to convince us through dialogue. Philosophy is supposed to convince us through conversation. What is the difference between the two? Well, if we look carefully, for example, at Hans-Görg Gadamer's Truth and Method, funny stories that he wrote in the book is obviously written in German, and in German,
He wrote everywhere gespräch for dialogue. Now gespräch in German, in English, is more like a conversation. It's not really a dialogue. Dialogue in German is dialogue. And unfortunately, some translators have made the mistake. And he pointed out in some interviews, and this is something also that Richard Warty picked up with great length in philosophy and the mirror of nature, that
We're now having a conversation. We do not know where this conversation will lead. At least I hope our viewers believe us, but we really don't know. We're talking about my book and we'll see where it goes. But in a dialogue it's different. A dialogue is basically, unfortunately, what happens, for example, at United Nations. They sit at the table, but they already know how they're going to vote and nothing is going to happen there. And this goes back to Plato.
PJ Wehry (13:17.519)
Yeah
Santiago (13:38.264)
talked about truth and he took the allegory of the cave, he doesn't have a conversation there. He has a dialogue. He actually picks from the hair of the slave to show him the light. that is an imposition. That's a dialogue. A conversation is different. A conversation we really don't know where we're going to end. And the most interesting thing is that we don't even know whether we're going to be convinced by the other one. But it implies the possibility of being convinced.
If you're really open in a conversation, well, you might come out of the conversation change, right? You might be actually convinced, you might not want to admit it at the end, but you would be convinced. But this difference happens also in the big difference I make in the book between warnings and prediction. So prediction has to do with futurology. They tell you tomorrow it's going to rain, that's it. Or tomorrow you're going to get surgery and this...
PJ Wehry (14:08.53)
Yes.
Santiago (14:36.098)
There isn't much you can do about it, right? So you sort of block there. But a warning is different. A warning is not really meant to change the future as much as to change the present. In other words, to create an alteration of the present situation. So when climate scientists are warning us, or at least when they used to, because I think now it's kind of late, but at least 20 years ago, they were telling us
If you change now your habits, we change now the whole organization of our society, we have a chance to have a different future. But warnings are meant to change the present, not to change the future. This is the big difference. the pressure here revolves around the idea that maybe philosophy should be a philosophy like I pretend. I try to set up here a philosophy of warning, which is meant to pressure us. And this pressure can take place through different forms.
to art, for example, to politics, also to philosophy, depends what sort of philosophy we're dealing with. So I think art here can have a very big impact, but not only art, also the simple issue of, for example, learning to listen properly, because we don't really listen that much anymore. There's a lot of hearing going around. So artificial intelligence is
It's more about hearing, right, repeating many times. But the listening, which implies also a responsibility, right, that you're actually listening and comprehending, that's something that doesn't happen so much. And I think that we need to find new methods to return to listen properly. And it is interesting that during my research, I found this professor of medicine at Columbia University, Chalkon.
And she had set up now for 20 years this new discipline called narrative medicine, where they practice and they teach young students to listen, to listen to their patients. Often we find ourselves going to our physicians and you really don't have a feeling that it's actually listening to how you're feeling. And listening is part of healing also. You can't really heal unless they really listen to you.
Santiago (16:59.456)
And so this is another concept from the book which I think it's very important to emphasize.
PJ Wehry (17:09.885)
And when you talk about the healing part, and there's numerous things I want to jump on as you were talking there, but just to piggyback off what you just said at the end there, when you're talking about healing and listening, there was always this idea of the bedside manner. But in some ways that kind of became almost an emotional, almost pill type of thing. It's like, oh, you just need to have a gentle manner, a kind manner.
but there wasn't that engagement, that responsibility, even as you said with Goddomer, that openness. Am I understanding correctly why like bedside manner should have the listening in it, but the reason we had to stop using, start using things like narrative medicine or listening in medicine is because bedside manner became a checklist, right? Like, I mean, I think that's a lot of what's going on with medicine. Am I tracking with you there?
Santiago (17:43.106)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Santiago (18:03.416)
Yeah, let's put it this way. and also to expand my, my response, there is listening and there is also radical listening and what will radical listening imply? Radical listening implies that you, most of all, you have to listen to what the other one is not telling you. I mean, a physician has to be very careful also in, you know, often someone might, you know, I know it happens to me that you go to a physician and you don't really want to tell him everything because
PJ Wehry (18:23.687)
Mmm.
Santiago (18:33.646)
he would give you a shot or whatever. So the question here, I mean, this is actually how psychoanalysis works. I also, it would be very difficult for a psychiatrist or psychologist not to listen properly. I mean, most of his job is basically to listen to you. I think this is something that is related in some way. Here I'm going to stretch a little bit my answer, but this is related. My book really goes against
completely against the idea of trigger warning, which is something that is very popular now everywhere. Not because I want to, I don't want my, I have a problem with trigger warnings and sometimes I I even use it myself in class when I teach sometimes, I try not to, but the problem here is that warnings, what are warnings really meant to do? They are meant, are they meant to rescue us from?
an emergency or rescue us into an emergency. There is a big difference between the two. And I think that warnings are meant to rescue us into an emergency because if we really want to have some sort of salvation like Herderling used to say, danger grows, salvation grows, well, yeah, we're supposed to get closer to that warning, to that danger of the warning. And one way we can get closer to that is if philosophy, art, science,
they rescue us into the warning, not away from the warning. In other words, trigger warnings go precisely the opposite direction. so my concern here is that philosophy is supposed to rescue us into the warning that we're not listening to. Now, in order to do that, we have to take into consideration that, for example, the way we teach, the way our education works in general,
Because a lot of people have, for example, I mean, I remember the first beginning, Leta Thunberg, when she didn't go to school and she started her strikes and all that, a lot of people, a lot of conservative probably, they were telling her, you have to go to school, you're supposed to go to school, know, whatever. But are you sure? Because that school, that education is the one that in some way has created this climate change. So we sort of need to create a different education, right? A different
Santiago (20:58.572)
understanding of what even understanding means. So in the book I explain what a different horizon of understanding would be one that takes into consideration one. So when Nerta Thunberg tells politicians, and she's done that in several occasions, that she thought they were not understanding her, they were not hearing her because they were not going, they were not stressed, they were not worried. And no, the situation is that we are supposed to be worried.
So if our education teaches us, well, not to be worried about such an emergency as climate change, then our whole education system is wrong. It's not going in the right direction. So warnings, it's actually quite revolutionary if you think about it, because a warning implies that you have to create an alteration of the current situation. Something has to change now, not tomorrow. And this is a problem. This is not something we...
Probably it's not something we are ready to do.
PJ Wehry (22:05.533)
Bear with me here. When you're talking about that radical listening, not only listening to what someone's saying, but listening to what someone is not saying. If we translate that from hearing to sight, I think we could use Gottemers. We can return to Gottemers metaphor here of the fusion of horizons, that it's not the fusion of perspectives. It's allowing us to have common action because
one person is seeing the same thing from a different angle. And so they're listening to the other person so that they can then share, actually, this is what I see. And with that combined knowledge, they can solve the problem together. Is that a?
Santiago (22:48.782)
The thing is here, Gadamer, you're right to bring here in because Gadamer has this notion that if you understand, if you understand at all, you must have understand differently. We have to understand differently in order to understand. If we all understand the same way, like artificial intelligence, then nobody understands anything. mean, we just see the same thing. So there won't be a conversation, there won't be an alteration, and there won't be progress.
So the problem here is that how do we understand all differently? How does it work in order for us to understand differently? And even simple things like data, scientific data, know, scientific data in a way it is useless, right? It's useless because once you know it, it doesn't really go very, you you can't really do much without it, right? That's why Bruno Latour, which is a philosopher that when we had the pandemic, I remember that
his first article in the Guardian was, this pandemic is a warning. He actually wrote an article with that title because in that article he explained that data has a certain, data without institutions, without universities, without conversation, without people reading it as a society, it collapses, it doesn't work. So understanding implies that we understand together all in a different way.
And precisely that difference is what's going to constitute probably an awareness that allows us in some way to engage in a conversation. The fact is that we're not having a conversation about climate change. This is the point. We might have a summit every year, but we know how that ends, right? So the issue here is that we're not listening to warnings, warnings in themselves. Also, there's a problem, there's a semantical issue here because warnings as opposed to predictions
They sound weak, right? A warning, you know, this will probably happen if this doesn't happen. You have a sort of, you have a possibility not to act, which is what happens, or to get engaged in the warning. Either way, it is curious that it's very difficult to open any webpage, any newspapers today and not see the word warning in it, right? Warnings are everywhere, everywhere.
Santiago (25:12.002)
and we hardly listen to them.
PJ Wehry (25:17.723)
What is warning without openness to hear the warning? Does that make warning into just theater?
Santiago (25:26.988)
A warning without
PJ Wehry (25:29.809)
warning without openness. you have someone, mean, I think like in a...
Santiago (25:35.832)
Thanks for watching.
PJ Wehry (25:36.741)
If you think if you think yeah, if you're talking about like like the drinking scenario or I mean even like the boy who cried who cried wolf, but there actually is a wolf and he comes he says there's a wolf if everyone is closed off to him, then really it's just kind of performative. Is that are you saying warn it like it does warning necessarily have this kind of two way like that requires two parties?
Santiago (26:03.874)
Yeah, warnings, I think, require even more parties because a warning, right, it requires a lot of us to engage and to accept that we have to listen. The problem here also is the question in order to answer, there's a difference between authority and authoritarianism, right? Authoritarian. know, someone might be authoritarian and, you know, why there's so many problems now with fake news, alternative media.
PJ Wehry (26:07.121)
That's...
Santiago (26:33.558)
And why a lot of people are very skeptical towards science and all that. Well, that's because they confuse, like Gadamer again explained, they confuse someone, the authority someone can have with, instead, someone that can be authoritarian and tell you what. The difference between the two is very simple. You don't have respect for someone if he's an authoritarian. He's telling you what to do. But someone who has authority does not
does not need to impose on you, you will give it to him. He has the authority to do this. So we have to be able to, through a different education probably, to understand that some people do have that authority. And we don't have that authority. I'm a philosopher, well, I know very little about biology, so I'm not going to get involved. I'm going to have to trust. I'm going to have to trust the system in some way.
How are we going to do that? Well, we're going to do that through a different, a more conversationalist society, education, and also a more conversationalist philosophy also. Richard Rorty suggested at the end of his last writing that in order to overcome the continental analytic division, what we needed is a more conversationalist philosophy. I think that's something that it's worthwhile to think about.
PJ Wehry (28:00.347)
Well, obviously, I mean, I'm on board with that. I mean, that's the whole point of this podcast. So.
Santiago (28:08.482)
Well, yeah, that's the whole point, right? The whole point here is that viewers have the opportunity to listen to different point of views, right? And engage with each one of them. You can only do that when you have a podcast like this or some good course or an MA that is actually worthwhile paying for.
PJ Wehry (28:32.861)
Yeah, well, and this is where I think some of the older academic institutions, maybe institutions that the practices like open forums and debates are important, right? So that people can work through things. And I think that there's a difference there between that. And I see you talk about metadata and you talk about dialogues or impositions where you know the ending is fixed.
Santiago (28:48.59)
Yeah,
PJ Wehry (29:00.793)
And when your algorithm is constantly feeding you the same side all the time, then the ending is always fixed, right? Versus hopefully what you have in academics is that openness.
Santiago (29:15.534)
Right. Unfortunately, universities now, make the very, I make a distinction in the university about there's a difference between being in university, but being with a capital B that deals with existence and your existence and being in university with a small B that it would be sort of you just, you know, just enroll, you just going through that, right? There's a very big difference how you, how to, how I always tell, I always make this very clear for my students to have this.
this paper I wrote called Being in the University, where I tell them that, well, hope, know, lots of students, most of the time they are there and they already know that they are there for an existential choice, basically. It's not, I don't think anybody comes to make money there. mean, that's not going to happen. That's not going to happen. But Gadamer had this funny story that I think I tell a story in the book that when he was teaching in the 80s in Boston College, some student
went up to him and told him, are you teaching this famous seminar on Plato? And Gadamer said, yeah, yeah, sure, you should come. And he said, no, no, I can't come because I already took Plato. OK, so that's different. Now, the experience of listening to Gadamer discussing Plato is not something you can repeat. It's different every time. Now, this logic of being different every time
PJ Wehry (30:30.589)
Yeah
Santiago (30:43.054)
That's what is vital here. In other words, what I try to do in my classes, I probably don't want to achieve this, but I ask them to try to do this. Let's do a different course every year, a different class every Tuesday. In other words, has to be, if it's different, it's good. If it's the same every year, well, it's boring, right? Nothing happens there. That's why the danger is artificial intelligence.
PJ Wehry (30:45.297)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (31:13.221)
Yes. Would another way of saying that I'm just making, want to, I like doing this because I'd like to see if I'm, if there's like a parallel track that helps. When you talk about being versus being in the university, capital B, lowercase B, would a difference also maybe be between consumption and formation?
Santiago (31:35.854)
Right. Rather than formation, another good word for formation is edification, which is the same thing. So it's not very different. so the idea here in the university is right, that we have, that we try to, know, progress means edification. It's something that, it's not simply that you get your degree. Well, your degree is part of, know, the degree is part of your, Foucault used to say that when you get a degree, the degree is really for those who don't have it.
degree so they can look at you. But a degree is a degree, nothing really happens there, right? It's what you do with a degree, right? And this actually works throughout the spectrum, throughout all the disciplines. the question is, and I think that warnings help to involve us in the edification, right? Because warnings in some way, you cannot, if you listen to a warning, you have to engage, you have to become involved in, right? And
PJ Wehry (32:29.65)
Hmm.
Santiago (32:31.286)
And that requires that we are actually open, right? Open to what? Open to a conversation that is different, right? Because the feature of warnings is very different from the feature of prediction, right? I explained in the book, it's very different that, know, in French there are two words for a feature. is la venir and la futur.
Now, Lavinier has been translated, it's concept of Derrida, and it has been translated by the to come, what is coming, what is coming towards us. Now, that's the warning, that's the future of warning, right? It's a future that you have to be involved and it is coming to you, right? And you have to be capable of listening to it. Instead, the future of prediction is basically what is actually the future, what will happen. You really can't do it, you even don't have to do anything. You just let everything work. Now,
What we are interested in is in the future of Lavignier, the future that is coming towards us. It's like when you get, I'm going to, I hope to find love. So I'm going to go on Bumble or one of these apps and I'm going to find love there. Well, let's see. But even there, right? Well, you have to listen, right? You have to check whether this is actually going to work, right? have to. So love, philosophy, ethics. Well, these are things that
You have to get involved in that. It would never work there from a pragmatical point of view, right? You have to be involved in that. I think that thinking in terms of warning can help us imagine also from a political point of view. And this normally wouldn't want to get in trouble. what does a politics of warnings look like? Because it's very, very difficult today for a politician anywhere.
to imagine, you know, I'm going to have a plan for the next 20 years. It is a problem. It is a problem because of the way we have organized society. Right after the pandemic, the UN had set up a new, they wanted, didn't work out. They had set up, they tried to set up a new organization to prevent pandemics and to have more coordination, right? And the first politicians that opposed that were all far-right populists, from Trump, Pio Farage.
Santiago (34:54.55)
and Meloni, they immediately opposed that. Why? Because, know, far-right populists, think in terms of, you know, very short, maybe a year or two years, not more, maybe a week, right? And today we need politics, you know, we need a politics of warning, a politics that foresees, that is prepared, right, to when something happens, you know, the more we are prepared. I all the cuts that Trump has been doing this past year, they are very much
specifically against warming. They all have to do with, you know, there are too many guarantees there. are too many. Those guarantees are the one we should be financing more, not less. That's why, of course, he's cutting so much stuff in the university and in the humanities in particular.
PJ Wehry (35:28.752)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (35:47.823)
And it's there's this really interesting thing. I had kind of this picture in my head and it's interesting to see it play out at a global stage like you're mentioning. If someone warns that an emergency is coming, let's say even at a small of like, hey, there's a flash flood and some people listen and they work together, but other people look and you can tell they understand, but they turn away. It divides the community, which is exactly what I mean. One of the things that
we're all talking about the dropping of guarantees, all this kind of stuff, is that the political world is splintering. it's really, I mean, this is a really fascinating way to think about it, is it's because of what warnings demand and just deciding to ignore those demands.
Santiago (36:40.31)
The problem here is that the question, the issue, the problem of warning is not whether what sort of future we're going to have. It's really more at this point, whether we're going to have a future at all. yeah, because I mean, from a point of view of climate change, it's pretty clear that we are really in a very bad situation now. I looked at the, I think it was...
It works very well, but the movie, the Netflix movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, Don't Look Up, that was a good example for warnings, right? So it is clearly coming down, nobody cares, there's no warning that works, right? And at the end, everything wakes up. Now, it sounds a little bit... I mean, it's quite sad actually that we have so much problem in believing in this simple data, which is very, very poor.
from a theoretical point of view. mean, data is very simple. I so which way do we have to start to listen to warning? Now in the book, I try to explain that, I suggest, because this is, I don't know whether this is the right way or the right solution. I have no idea. I have a feeling that in general, art can give us a different response. In general, not only art, even some activists, like we mentioned before, Geta Thunberg. I mean,
Why do most people know who Greta Thunberg is and nobody knows who Stanley Hansen is? Stanley Hansen is one of the most important climate change scientists that he explained all the stuff back in 70s. But we all know Greta Thunberg. How come? I mean, it's not simply because she has a Twitter account. That doesn't do the trick. mean, it's more than that. It's because she, in some ways, incarnates the problem.
problem is her, right? She is part of the, but she wants to become part of the problem. And the same things can happen also with art. If you see a lot of environmental artists, that they sort of invite us to understand these issues through a different realm, which is the realm of art, right? Which can actually touch us in a different way than scientists can do. Let's put it this way also, we're not in this mess from a climate change point of view.
Santiago (39:04.526)
because of a few postmodern philosophers. It's not the otar, the bad timo, or the ridas fault. If it's someone's fault, it's because, well, we are not capable as a society to listen to simple one. It's very simple. The problem here is that we can't find different ways to listen to one. For example, there are...
PJ Wehry (39:20.677)
Mmm, yeah.
Santiago (39:32.982)
not only artists, also a lot of even a lot of theories that all the series, all the movies we have that in some way they want to warn us, they are part of the solution. I I have I am very skeptical at this point that even philosophy can be very useful here. Philosophy could be useful at least to help situate the conversation. But more important than that is that we all become in some way activists because an activist
does listen to warnings, otherwise it wouldn't be an action. So the book tries to come up with this idea of a philosophy of warning, a philosophy that tries to rescue us into the emergencies we have. And it does this by emphasizing the problem of listening, by also emphasizing the problem of interpretation, because when we interpret data, right, it's a whole issue here. And I I've been raised in hermeneutic philosophy. So
That's basically what I do. But interpretation here, it's very important because when we interpret the data, we're not describing the data. If you describe the data, we're not going to go very far. But when we interpret the data, whatever data it is, we are involved in that data. The data actually becomes ours in some way. So the goal here, one is to request our interpretation to change the present now.
And sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. The pandemic was a very good example that we did not listen to warnings. They were there for a very long time. a pandemic will return. I mean, at this point, we shouldn't be that surprised. We should be prepared. But how are we going to be prepared? for example, I obviously know a little bit about the big things that would happen. For example, a big blackout.
online in Spain, actually, we had one day blackout a few months ago. And that's something that could happen again. It could happen somewhere else. But not only that, for example, I think the big resistance we have now to antibiotics, that's something that is going to be a very big deal. So very, very big deal. And so it is important to listen to those warnings, to have faith in those. And most of all, because warnings will
PJ Wehry (41:48.455)
Yeah.
Santiago (42:00.842)
work in particular if we manage to maintain institutions, public institutions alive. The guarantee we have of who we listen to really comes from that institutions we have. So a very important philosopher here is Cornelius Castorialis. He works on all the issues of institutions and trust. well, he said that a society only works if there are actual institutions that hold society together. So institutions are
are part of the solution, think. So it's more government, not less.
PJ Wehry (42:35.453)
Yeah, I'm curious as you talk here about danger leading to salvation, the need for activism, is there almost a, it seems almost like a parallel structure to in theology, confession and repentance.
Santiago (42:54.606)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (42:56.574)
Is that a fair comparison?
Santiago (42:59.104)
Yeah, I think so. It's a fair comparison. think that the problem here is, it's always that it sounds like warnings deal with something that would happen later on, but they're meant for today. They're meant for right now. They're not meant for tomorrow, right? None of them are because the idea is to change the present today, to pressure you to change the present today because most likely that will happen.
PJ Wehry (43:11.899)
Yeah.
Yes.
PJ Wehry (43:28.348)
Yes.
Santiago (43:28.984)
So this is the important thing there. So when Heidegger, he warned us back in the 50s that science doesn't think, which is one of the chapters of my book, he was really warning us of precisely the fact that, artificial intelligence does not think, it calculates. It calculates very, very well, right, within us. And he was warning us because if we didn't listen to that, right, we're going to let in some way the calculation.
take over. And this is precisely what is happening now. Calculation has taken, is taking over, right? And a lot of people are losing their jobs and it doesn't really even make a lot of sense because, you know, people don't have jobs and you won't have a society. it's not, it doesn't really make sense. So I think that this are, we have to, we have to, this is a problem here also whether we are prepared to listen to one.
This is why the question of education that we mentioned before, formation like you said or edification, is vital here.
I think that primary school, middle school, all that stuff is vital. It's much more important than what comes afterwards in some way. I think that's where the true change can happen in some way, rather than at the university.
PJ Wehry (44:53.809)
Yeah, I mean, I had Dr. Jennifer Hurt on and we talked about formation and edification, I mean, your continued use of Goddumer, I think like the German word Bildung is really like what we're looking for there, right? Is that with...
Santiago (45:10.744)
Right, right. We're looking for a formation that first of all has no end, right? It doesn't stop. It never stops, right? So it's a little bit, it's like the opposite of a classic. Gadamer also explained, what is a classic? Well, a classic is a classic not because of the origin where it comes from, but because it continues to have effects. It continues to work regardless of the time that passes. We still like to listen to it.
PJ Wehry (45:18.61)
Right.
Santiago (45:39.358)
listen or read or whatever. So edification should be the same thing. It's never really end. It's a little bit even like therapy. A good therapy doesn't really end. know, keep on, know, probably your psychiatrist dies at a certain point and you find a new one and you keep on working on the same problem. But you never, this problem, you know, it's like secularization. never did it. God is always there in some way, but it becomes weaker, right?
So, right, so there's an edification there and there is, and we have to be capable of affecting, right, the fact that, well, we were never done, right? We're never done with education, which is a problem in our capitalistic society.
PJ Wehry (46:20.986)
Yeah. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (46:27.857)
Right. Well, I mean, that's a consumption idea, right? It's like, I end of the transaction. I have the thing now. I mean, that goes back to your story about Goddomer and Plato. right. I can't take that again. I've already, I've already done Plato, right? Plato is over. you've mentioned AI a couple of times and you've kind of, you, you had a very small, little mention about the loss of jobs and that sort of thing, but that's a big part. This, this idea of calculation taking over. What is the
Santiago (46:40.3)
Right. That's right.
PJ Wehry (46:57.553)
danger you particularly see from AI and what that you're addressing. What is the warning you have about AI?
Santiago (47:05.894)
Well, in the book, the warning comes from Heidegger that he was telling us, you know, we have to be, we should be, we should be worried, we should be, we shouldn't let science take over. Now, AI is a very good example. And I think Thompson that you recently had here on your podcast, he has a book on Heidegger and AI, which I just read, which is an excellent book. But the problem is that we in some way, like Heidegger said, you know, the atomic bomb has already exploded.
it's already too late in some way. And so if it's already too late, that's why Heidegger talks about what sort of other beginning can we envision? And also what sort of philosophy can we envision for this age, let's call it age of artificial intelligence? And well, Heidegger responds to this idea, which is not very different from warnings actually, which is this notion that we're supposed to think in terms of Andanken.
of thinking that comes from what is, you we have to be able to listen, to wait for an event to occur. So it's very Heideggerian, it's a lot of dark stuff. But the basic idea of Heidegger is that we have to be able to understand that the problem of being or the problem of existence has to emerge again. We have to create situations in order for a different realm of being, in other words, a different
Even a different idea of science actually has to emerge. And we can push that. We can help that happen. Now, Heidegger has actually, in Introduction to Metaphysics, which is 1936, he actually, at beginning, actually states as a sentence where he explains that being is a warning. He actually talks about being as a warning. And why does he do that? Well, he does that because what he's trying to tell is that
PJ Wehry (48:57.149)
Hmm.
Santiago (49:03.692)
being in other words the idea that there are different openings that we can have and that we're supposed to listen to them. Well, that has it's actually the views with the possibilities that we have also from anticipation of a different future. So I have my problem with artificial intelligence and in general with internet and in general with the framing like Hedegaard would call it the space, the framing that we have of
everything we see of reality in general is that we are losing, right? We're losing other more fruitful possibilities, right? And so if we ask today, which is probably what I'm working now on a new book, is what does creation, right? What does originality, what does signature mean in the age of artificial intelligence? How can we be original now?
PJ Wehry (49:34.843)
Yeah.
Santiago (49:58.882)
How can we be original? It's an issue, right? It is not easy to be original now. So we have become so framed that, well, there is no thinking anymore. And also there are no warnings anymore. So we really, Because artificial intelligence has more to do with prediction, right? They can predict a lot of stuff. But the warnings are the ones that we're supposed to interest. Because the warnings are the ones that are meant to change
PJ Wehry (50:14.172)
Right.
Santiago (50:28.386)
We're artificial intelligence.
is in motion of doing because I don't think this is already something that is happening.
In the book I tried to explain many of the problems that have arisen from autopilot that destroy themselves or from, well there many examples I make in the book, but the job issue is the most important one. Employment.
PJ Wehry (50:53.969)
Well, love again, people should just buy and read your excellent book. That's the that's the real answer. But the you have the banality of evil. And I think it's reflected in we kill people based on metadata. Right. Rather than wisdom, it's statistical analysis. Right. That's kind of how. And so I which just reeks of Adolf Eichmann. Right.
Santiago (51:09.741)
Right.
Santiago (51:22.519)
Right.
PJ Wehry (51:22.886)
Like, well, the statistics said, and it's like, that's not a justification for cutting anybody off.
Santiago (51:31.714)
Right, so banality of evil. We are now looking at how that's taking place both in Ukraine and in Palestine. We have a clear example here of banality of evil in motion right now. And this is a problem, right? It's a problem. And it's also something that, you know, the fact that it has become so automatic that it has, you know, that there is what they're basically sending almost sending
drones and stuff, they don't even have to go to war anymore. Well, this is an indication that we have stopped thinking, right? That we have stopped thinking and that not only that, evil has become banal, but that we have become banal. Right? It doesn't really. Right. And so I think this is a, this is a very big problem that we have, but not only, not only from, from this tour, this two words, one of them is that one, one of them is a genocide. is no doubt about it. And
PJ Wehry (52:15.58)
Mm-hmm.
Santiago (52:31.18)
The problem here is that, you know, whether how are we, how are we going to, I mean, I live in Spain, not that far from both of these conflicts. And it's very difficult for me to become involved, you know, for peace, let's put it this way. And the fact that it is difficult for me even to send money or to help me and so many other people, everybody actually, it's an indication of this penalty of evil. Right. So it's basically like artificial intelligence.
can't do anything against it. So when when Hedegaard talks about being in guest state, in a situation where we are so framed that nothing really happened, this is what I was talking about at the beginning of our conversation. I mentioned that most of my research stems from this idea that the greatest emergency is the absence of emergency. That's right. seems like that's not an emergency. And both of those wars or conflict
PJ Wehry (53:18.45)
Yes.
Santiago (53:29.826)
they are emergency, right? And we cannot in some way engage with them. So in some way they are absent. So this is a problem. So Ana Alan, of course, she was, she would, I wouldn't even need to imagine what she would be saying about both of these conflicts, it's pretty clear. So she is one of the authors, but of course there's also the Monde de Beauvoir, which I, which, because I tried to, know, Heidegger for science, Nietzsche for God and,
and Alliance for Totalitarianism. But I also use Simone de Beauvoir, which I think is a philosopher that we should be reading. I think one of the best experiences of writing this book was re-reading her work because, I mean, this is a philosopher that's really anticipated all Butler and all all philosophers, gender philosophers. She's an amazing philosopher. And I think that she's a very good, you know, her warning that one has to become a woman.
That's actually a warning because it's also an invitation, right? Today to, you know, to be yourself in some way. And so I think it's important to, I mean, we can get a lot out from this classics if we read them in terms of warnings, whether, what were they really telling us? What were they, were they warning us about something? And if you look carefully, most philosophers are, right? They're not really telling us the truth. They're actually telling us more than the truth.
PJ Wehry (54:53.17)
Yes.
Santiago (54:56.718)
I mean, if they would be telling us the truth, that wouldn't be that interesting. I think it's important to remember here that Richard Rorty actually warned in 1996 of Donald Trump becoming president in achieving our country, which is one of those warnings by a philosopher that actually turned out to be true.
PJ Wehry (55:17.319)
Yeah. And I think, and I'm trying to find the right quote and my papers have gone, are out of order. But you talk about the society is organized to continue. And I can't find the exact quote here, but it's organized to just keep going and repeating itself and to just keep, to keep growing versus being able to stop and deal with the emergency.
Santiago (55:38.872)
Right?
PJ Wehry (55:45.969)
Right, I think that's kind how you wrap it up at the end. Frustrated they can't find, yeah.
Santiago (55:49.23)
Right, right, right, No, no, no, I understand what you're saying. Right, there's a problem here that it is.
I mean, it shouldn't be so difficult to create, to slow things down. It shouldn't be so difficult to listen to science, to slow things down, to be aware and to be cautious of artificial intelligence. And the fact that we can't, we really cannot do much about it. It's first of all, indicate that, well, the fact, this is a big problem. I mean, it's a very, very big problem. This is not.
This is not a question what sort of future, it's a question whether we're going to have a future. And all we had to do in the case of climate change was to listen to the science. all the responses because I've been talking about my students and some friends, well, know, we don't listen to one because of capitalism, because of... Yeah, no, we don't listen to one because we don't want to listen. I think society has a lot to do with the fact that we have
problem that we don't listen and I know that I don't listen to many warnings myself. the problem for this is that warnings are always weak, they're always subtle, they're not always that clear. And I think that philosophy in general can help us to listen to warnings in a different way, as long as we are, for example, hermeneutical about it. And what does being hermeneutical about warnings mean? Well, it means that we have to understand them in a different way, right?
we have to understand them in such a way that we not only become involved, but we become involved together. The issue here is that the problem here from what you're asking me from society is not only what sort of society we want to have, but also whether we want to have a society. Because
Santiago (57:51.566)
I'm not so sure that we are in the United States. It's very different from Europe, of course. But, know, in the United States, I think we feel that even more. Society is difficult to have a society. We can have a good neighborhood, perhaps, but as a society, are more divisions there, right? A lot of divisions. And in Europe, we're probably getting there, but not so fast. And my concern is, well, we have to learn to...
to interpret, but know, interpretation, what does interpretation really mean? Interpretation means projection a different future. When I interpret, I'm not simply interpreting, know, by when Luther translated the Bible, he didn't just translate the Bible, he actually created the German language. It was a big deal. So when Nietzsche tells us there are no facts, the only interpretation was he's telling us that, well, facts exist because of interpretation. So warnings is a way, okay, to try to
respond to transcendental problems without losing sight of our role in society somewhere. I think that philosophy has a role, whether it works or not, that's up to debate. But I do think that we have a responsibility, which is not simply a theoretical responsibility. It's actually much more of a practical responsibility.
push it a little bit. Heidegger did not overcome and create the destructive metaphysics, which afterwards went further on deconstructing metaphysics. He didn't do that because at the end of the deconstruction, he will find being once for all, a different understanding of reality. Those were not the reason. The reasons for overcoming metaphysics were actually quite ethical. It had to do more with the fact that metaphysics in itself
PJ Wehry (59:45.105)
Yes.
Santiago (59:48.256)
It's basically science. It's artificial intelligence. It's framing. And so we have to move away from that as much as possible.
PJ Wehry (01:00:01.085)
Dr. Zabala, this has been absolutely awesome. I want to be respectful of your time. And I think after everything you just just said, I think this is a great ending question for someone who has listened to this podcast besides buying and reading your book. What is something that you would tell them to think about or to even do? What is something practical that they can do over the next week in response?
to what we have talked about today.
Santiago (01:00:32.558)
First of all, I think you can also find the book in libraries, in university libraries. you don't want to buy it or you can find it there. well, I think the book will invite you to think in terms, I hope that the first thing we do is invite others to listen to warnings and most of all to decide which warning to listen to.
It's very difficult to tell you, you should listen to this scientist or this government or this. That's not something that easy to do. But we can do research, right? We can check. We can see who has more authority for us to listen to them, right? And that authority can be what sort of credential the person has, or the scientist has, or even the politician has. But probably the more credential it has,
the more institutions, public institutions it has around it, the more we can listen to that warning. And most of all, to think that whatever one is engaged, whether it's environmental, political, or whatever, I think it's very important to think in terms of warning that it is something for me to do today, not tomorrow. A warning is about what I can do today and to listen to it. And to listen to it as a community, not so much as an individual.
PJ Wehry (01:02:01.745)
Great answer. I love the sense of urgency. Dr. Zabala, been a real joy to have you on today. Thank you.
Santiago (01:02:09.504)
And thank you very much, gave me a lot of things to think about. I'm going to take a lot of notes.
PJ Wehry (01:02:13.853)
Have a good day.
Santiago (01:02:15.16)
Thank you for having me. Thank you.