Imperatives in Social Media and Beyond: A Lingisian Analysis

It has become a commonplace that our phones and other devices have a strange and unhealthy hold on us. Social media seemed to promise us a world where we are all linked into a borderless community where each could be seen, recognized, and valued in our individuality. But in fact, things have turned out very differently. Our devices, social media, and A.I. grab and manipulate our attention with the peculiar force of moral and psychological imperatives. In this paper, I turn to the philosopher Alphonso Lingis, who has written with uncommon clarity and depth about the nature of imperatives and of community, in hopes of finding a way out of these dark times. Building on the insights of Lingis, I argue that this is not best approached as a traditional moral battle, e.g. along Kantian lines. Rather, we have to develop a sense of community that can transcend partisan interests and go deeper into the nature of imperatives, beyond autonomous, self-regulating reason, toward our embodied, affective encounter with others, in which the need and vulnerability of the other human, suffering and facing their finitude, calls to us and makes the demand on us that is the truly compelling moral imperative.