‘One of the most powerful effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, after its terrible toll on human life, has been on our liberty. Around the world, people’s movements have been severely curtailed, tracked and monitored. This has had an impact on our abilities to earn a living, study and even be with loved ones at the end of their lives. Freedom, it seems, is one of this virus’s biggest casualties.
‘But an article by Jean-Paul Sartre for The Atlantic in 1944 makes me question whether this is a straightforward tale of loss. The French philosopher summed up his thesis in the line: ‘Never were we freer than under the German occupation.’ Sartre’s core insight was that it is only when we are physically stopped from acting that we fully realise the true extent and nature of our freedom. If he is right, then the pandemic is an opportunity to relearn what it means to be free.
‘Of course, our situation is not nearly as extreme as it was for the French under occupation, who, as Sartre said, ‘had lost all our rights, beginning with the right to talk’. Still, like most of us, I have at times found myself unable to do almost everything I had taken for granted. During the strictest lockdown period, nights out at theatres, concert halls and cinemas were cancelled. I couldn’t go for a walk in the countryside, relax in a bar or restaurant, sit on a park bench, visit anyone, even leave my home more than once a day.’
Read here (Aeon, Sept 30, 2020)
