Senses of the Future

The future has become a problem for the present. Almost every critical issue is now understood and experienced through the prism of the future since this is the primary focus for the playing out of crises.

Senses of the Future offers a wide-ranging discussion of theories of the future. It covers the main ideas of the future in modern thought and explores how we should view the future today in light of a plurality of very different and conflicting visions. The key contribution of this book is to bring together the different approaches with an account that is grounded in sociological and philosophical analysis as opposed to visions of the future that are inspired by extreme visions of catastrophe or approaches that see the future as only the continuation of the present. Given a revival of apocalyptical visions of the 'end times' and dystopian views of the future of human societies, there is urgent need for a new approach on how we should imagine the future. The author explores the future as a field of tensions that is revealed in narratives, utopian desires, hope, imaginaries, and social struggles concerning the potential possibilities of the present: the future does not just arrive; it has to be fought for.

This book is an important contribution to a critical sociology of the future. It is both a work of reconstruction and critique grounded in a historical and philosophical hermeneutics of the future.



Table of Contents

Chapter One

Introduction: Conflicting Visions of the Future

Contested Visions of the Future Today

Return to the Future

Outline of the Chapters

References

Chapter Two

When is the Future? The Problem of Time and the Human Condition

Time in the Physical World: Lessons from Physics

Has the Future already Begun? Time and History

Time, Life, and the Human Condition: Biology, Evolution, and Culture

Conclusion

References

Chapter Three

Lessons from the Past: What Does the Past Tell Us about the Future?

The Future in the Past

Failed Societies and Civilizational Collapse

Catastrophes and History

Conclusion

References

Chapter Four

Modernity and the Concept of the Future: Utopia, Progress, and Prophecy

The Future as Expectation

The Future as an Imaginary and the Emergence of Utopianism

The Future as Possibility

The Future as Experience

Conclusion

References

Chapter Five

Ideas of the Future in the Twentieth Century: Futurism, Modernism, Sociology, and Political Theory

New Political Ideas of the Future after 1945

Responses to the Future: From Fear of the Future to Futurology

Sociological Theory and the Future

Conclusion: The New Sociology of the Future

References

Chapter Six

Critical Theory and the Future: The Sources of Transcendence

The Intellectual Origins of Critical Theory: A Brief Outline

The Idea of the Future in the Critical Theory of the Early Frankfurt School

Habermas and the Communication Paradigm

The Responsibility Paradigm and Cosmopolitanism: Jonas and Apel

Critical Cosmopolitanism and the Idea of the Future

Conclusion: Cultural Models and the Future as Possibility

References

Chapter Seven

Conclusion: In The Shadow of the Future

Do We Need a Theory of the Future?

Are we already in a New Historical Era?

AI and a Posthuman Future

Struggles for the Future

References

Index