"EL TIEMPO DE LA PROMESA" - Marina Garcés

“THE TIME OF THE PROMISE” is a book by the Spanish philosopher and essayist Marina Garcés, published by Anagrama in 2023. The book begins with a challenging question: Do you remember the last important promise you made or someone made to you? Garcés's argument is that promises have been losing importance and place in today's world; making a sincere promise has become an uncomfortable or unexpected act; an ancient and romantic gesture. Today we make many plans, but very few promises, and the ones we make or are made to us are hardly credible. We project those promises we no longer make onto things, symbols, or other people. Those unmade promises are found in what we consume, in the technology we use, in the ways we socialize, or in the therapies we pursue. But why are promises so scarce today? Marina Garcés's answer is another question: How can we make promises if we live in a time where there is no future? The promise is a verbal act that, out of nothing, creates a bond capable of traversing time, uniting, in a single declaration, past, present, and future. Promises reconnect time. But instead of the time of the promise, we live in the time of the accident, which interrupts the regular course of things, which entails a discontinuity. The accident separates the times that the promise unites. If the promise is the delirium that imagines possible worlds, the accident is the unthinkable that interrupts and destroys them. The promise is not just a verbal formulation; it is an act, a performative verbal act, which becomes true as soon as it is formulated, which may or may not be fulfilled, but which generates an indelible bond, even if it results in betrayal. Promises embrace uncertainty, because we know they may not come true, but the promise rebels against reality without submitting to it. Whoever makes a promise knows that not everything is possible, but also knows that not everything is final, because promising interferes with destiny and opens the door to the universe of possibilities. But our society is also guided by promises from power: of God and salvation, of the State and protection, and of Capitalism and growth and wealth. I invite you to read Marina Garcés's book, a true promise of entry into the mighty river of ideas. Also check out the playlist "Books, Thought, and Society"    • Libros. Pensamiento y Sociedad