We are constantly being warned, yet we seldom heed these warnings. From authoritarian leaders to climate change and technological dystopias, we often fail to take action or even take these warnings seriously. Why do we dismiss the artists, scientists, environmentalists, and intellectuals who deliver them?

Santiago Zabala urges us to consider philosophy as a crucial warning system, a call to heed ominous “signs from the future.” He argues that warnings, unlike predictions, invite us to envision a radical departure from the present. Predictions tell us to submit to the inevitable, but warnings demand our participation in shaping a different future. A philosophy of warnings offers an alternative understanding that goes beyond “the real” and “the normal.” A politics of warnings helps us confront hidden emergencies through collective interpretation, listening, and action.

Signs from the Future brings thinkers like Nietzsche, Heidegger, de Beauvoir, and Arendt into dialogue with contemporary politics, art, and culture, drawing attention to warnings ignored. This book demonstrates why unresolved crises from the past must be reinterpreted today if we are to imagine an equitable future—or any future at all.