The exhaustion of the present world: the material conditions for the thinking of the possible worlds problem in contemporary continental philosophy

Abstract

 In the present article, we intend to discuss the material conditions that explain the arisal of a certain number of discussions on ‘possible worlds’ in contemporary continental philosophy. Our hypothesis is that this question arises from the context of a crisis of imagination and the climate change crisis that result from the inner movements of modernity. Thus, we perform an analysis of the genesis of modernity and its crisis from the works of Reinhart Koselleck and Paulo Arantes, showing the intrinsic link between the beginning of modernity, as a movement oriented towards a horizon of expectations and, afterwards, as a movement of decrease in this same horizon of expectations. It is from this context that it seems possible to identify what unites certain discussions on ‘possible worlds’ in those philosophies: it seems to be a movement that tries to overcome the exhaustion of the current world through an intensive movement that pluralizes the possible worlds inside the actual world.