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 OneIntroduction: Conflicting Visions of the FutureContested Visions of the Future TodayReturn to the FutureOutline of the ChaptersReferences Chapter TwoWhen is the Future?
The Problem of Time and the Human ConditionTime in the Physical World: Lessons from PhysicsHas the Future already Begun?
Time and HistoryTime, Life, and the Human Condition: Biology, Evolution, and CultureConclusionReferences Chapter ThreeLessons from the Past: What Does the Past Tell Us about the Future?The Future in the PastFailed Societies and Civilizational CollapseCatastrophes and HistoryConclusionReferences Chapter FourModernity and the Concept of the Future: Utopia, Progress, and ProphecyThe Future as ExpectationThe Future as an Imaginary and the Emergence of UtopianismThe Future as PossibilityThe Future as ExperienceConclusionReferences Chapter FiveIdeas of the Future in the Twentieth Century: Futurism, Modernism, Sociology, and Political TheoryNew Political Ideas of the Future after 1945Responses to the Future: From Fear of the Future to FuturologySociological Theory and the FutureConclusion: The New Sociology of the FutureReferences Chapter SixCritical Theory and the Future: The Sources of TranscendenceThe Intellectual Origins of Critical Theory: A Brief OutlineThe Idea of the Future in the Critical Theory of the Early Frankfurt SchoolHabermas and the Communication ParadigmThe Responsibility Paradigm and Cosmopolitanism: Jonas and ApelCritical Cosmopolitanism and the Idea of the FutureConclusion: Cultural Models and the Future as PossibilityReferences Chapter SevenConclusion: In The Shadow of the FutureDo We Need a Theory of the Future?Are we already in a New Historical Era?AI and a Posthuman FutureStruggles for the FutureReferences Index
