Paul Virilio and the temporal conditions of philosophical thinking

• Published in: Time & society Vol. 28; no. 2; pp. 763 - 782
• Main Author: Noonan, Jeff
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.05.2019; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Armed forces; Culture; Decision making; Economic conditions; Intelligence; Patience; Philosophy; Politics; Public opinion; Quality of life; Social life & customs; Social problems; Technological change; Time; life-value; Virilio; dromology; social acceleration; democracy
• ISSN: 0961-463X; 1461-7463
• DOI: 10.1177/0961463X17701957

Unlike the memes of popular digital culture, philosophical understanding accumulates through the patience of reflection on the long-term implications of human action. The paper will draw upon the recent work of Paul Virilio to explain the threat that the speeds of digital culture pose to philosophy, both as an institutionalised discipline of human inquiry with a just claim to public support, and as an intellectual practice with a just claim to public relevance. If Virilio is correct, the trajectory of technological development is towards the displacement of human decision making from all spheres of social life (political, economic, military, cultural, and technical-scientific) because human thought is too slow. Hence, there are moves towards eliminating the deliberative function of human thought in favour of pre-programmed algorithms that can trade a stock or fire a missile in immediate response to a pre-determined set of objective circumstances. Philosophy cannot keep pace. Since it is committed to an open-ended dialectic of interpretation, reason giving, critique, and rejoinder, its time frames are incompatible with immediate response, and would, if allowed to operate in politics or economics, impede the ‘efficient’ execution of routines. However, the ‘efficient’ execution of the dominant political and economic routines is undermining the conditions of life on the planet. Hence, the defence of slow philosophical thinking is at the same time the affirmation of a different temporality of life, politics, economics, and cultural interaction. Philosophy is not a luxury that humanity can no longer afford, but the vital necessity of historically informed intelligence the solution of our most pressing environmental and social problems requires more than ever.