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