Covid-19 pandemic – Philosophical approaches: Abstract

‘The paper begins with a retrospective of the debates on the origin of life: the virus or the cell? The virus needs a cell for replication, instead the cell is a more evolved form on the evolutionary scale of life. In addition, the study of viruses raises pressing conceptual and philosophical questions about their nature, their classification, and their place in the biological world. 

‘The subject of pandemics is approached starting from the existentialism of Albert Camus and Sartre, the replacement of the exclusion ritual with the disciplinary mechanism of Michel Foucault, and about the Gaia hypothesis, developed by James Lovelock and supported in the current pandemic by Bruno Latour. The social dimensions of pandemics, their connection to global warming, which has led to an increase in infectious diseases, and the deforestation of large areas, which have caused viruses to migrate from their native area (their "reservoir") are highlighted below. The ethics of pandemics is approached from several philosophical points of view, of which the most important in a crisis of such global dimensions is utilitarianism which involves maximizing benefits for society in direct conflict with the usual (Kantian) view of respect for people as individuals. 

‘After a retrospective of the COVID-19 virus that caused the current pandemic, its life cycle and its history, with an emphasis on the philosophy of death, the concept of biopower initially developed by Foucault is discussed, with reference to the practice of modern states of control of the populations and the debate generated by Giorgio Agamben who states that what is manifested in this pandemic is the growing tendency to use the state of emergency as a normal paradigm of government. An interesting and much debated approach is the one generated by the works of Slavoj Žižek, who states that the current pandemic has led to the bankruptcy of the current "barbaric" capitalism, wondering if the path that humanity will take is a neo-communism.  Another important negative effect is desocialization, with the conclusion of some philosophers that we cannot exist independently of our relationships with others, that a person's humanity depends on the humanity of those around him. 

‘The last section is dedicated to forecasting what the world will look like after the pandemic, and there are already signs of a change of paradigm, including the sudden disappearance of the ideology of the "wall": a cough was enough to make it suddenly impossible to avoid the responsibility that every individual has towards all living beings for the simple fact that he is part of this world, and of the desire to be part of it. The whole is always involved in part, because everything is, in a sense, in everything, and in nature there are no autonomous regions that are an exception.

‘The COVID-19 pandemic seems to restore the supremacy that once belonged to politics. One of the virtues of the virus is its ability to generate a more sober idea of freedom: to be free means to do what needs to be done in a specific situation.’

Read here (Academia.edu, Oct 14, 2020)

Meet the philosopher who is trying to explain the pandemic: Giorgio Agamben criticises the “techno-medical despotism” of quarantines and closing

‘In a society that respects science, expertise confers power. That has good results, but it brings a terrible problem: Illegitimate political power can be disguised as expertise. This was an idea of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, who used it to explain how experts had expanded definitions of criminality and sexual deviancy. One of Italy’s most celebrated thinkers, Giorgio Agamben, has recently applied similar insights to the coronavirus, at the risk of turning himself into a national pariah...

‘Mr. Agamben’s name may ring a bell for some Americans. He was the professor who in 2004, at the height of the “war on terror,” was so alarmed by the new U.S. fingerprinting requirements for foreign visitors that he gave up a post at New York University rather than submit to them. He warned that such data collection was only passing itself off as an emergency measure; it would inevitably become a normal part of peacetime life.

‘His argument about the coronavirus runs along similar lines: The emergency declared by public-health experts replaces the discredited narrative of “national security experts” as a pretext for withdrawing rights and privacy from citizens. “Biosecurity” now serves as a reason for governments to rule in terms of “worst-case scenarios.” This means there is no level of cases or deaths below which locking down an entire nation of 60 million becomes unreasonable. Many European governments, including Italy’s, have developed national contact tracing apps that allow them to track their citizens using cellphones.’

Read here (New York Times, August 21, 2020)

Six political philosophies in search of a virus: Critical perspectives on the coronavirus pandemic

 ‘The Coronavirus (Covid-19) poses interesting questions for social and political thought. These include the nature and limits of the ethical responsibility of the state, personal liberty and collective interests, human dignity, and state surveillance. As many countries throughout the world declared states of emergency, some of the major questions in political philosophy become suddenly highly relevant. Foucault’s writings on biopolitical securitization and Agamben’s notion of the state of exception take on a new reality, as do the classical arguments of utilitarianism and libertarianism. In this paper, I discuss six main philosophical responses to the pandemic, including provocative interventions made by Agamben, Badieu, and Zizek, Latour on the governance of life and death as well as the Kantian perspective of Habermas on human dignity...

‘If there is a single conclusion to be drawn from these philosophies, it is that the Coronavirus is more than a pathogen that threatens the lives of many people, but democracy is also in danger from the recent experiments with emergency government. These may not result in a permanent state of exception or the suspension of democracy – letting aside the Anthropocene scenario of extreme climate change requiring long-term states of exception – and the solution is not a simple restoration of individual liberty. Perhaps then more significant in the long-term will be new technologies of emergency governance that are now taking shape in large-scale societal experimentation with the technocratic management of populations in rapidly changing circumstances. Governments have acquired considerable technocratic power over their populations, which have been disciplined in the late Foucauldian sense of the term to desire safety over liberty.’

Download here (LSE European Institute, May 2020)

Coronavirus is not an enemy rather a courier

‘The Dao philosophical and medicinal way of tackling Covid-19 has been effective in China and need to be widely adopted...

‘If we regard COVID-19 as an ecological crisis, it requires a brand new thinking, a comprehensive, organic thinking which treats COVID-19 as political, economic, philosophical, ethical, and psychological issue.

‘We recommend Dao thinking. According to Dao or process-relational thinking, everything is closely related to one another. The COVID-19 crisis is a result of many causes. This means that tackling COVID-19 should be carried out in a multi-faceted way. Therefore it will require everybody’s active participation, and everyone including scientists, economists, educators, philosophers, government officials, ordinary people should take some responsibilities. We should rethink our development model, our way of thinking, our way of living, our way of consumption, our way of production, our dietary habits, and our education system, etc. All of them are closely related to the cause and cure of COVID-19.’

Read here (MR Online, Apr 23, 2020)

Covid-19 exposes the fragility of our belief-systems

‘You could say COVID-19 has exposed the extent to which we are in a ‘meaning crisis’ (to use John Vervaeke’s phrase). But I’m a little wary of this term as a historical concept. When did this ‘meaning crisis’ begin? For who? Maybe young Americans are in something of a meaning crisis now, as they turn away from Christianity, but British people went through that loss of faith in the late 19th century, and I’m sure it’s different for every culture around the world.

‘I’d suggest humans are always in a meaning crisis, we always have been. We have a tiny mind-map, equivalent to a photo of a street, and we’re out there in a great megapolis trying to use this photo as if it was Google Maps. We look around bewildered, look at our photo, and think ‘this looks a bit familiar’.

‘There is so much we don’t know, and we can learn to be OK with that. As a rule of thumb, we can be suspicious of any expert who seems over-certain, who rarely pauses for breath or questions their assumptions. When was the last time they admitted they were wrong? When was the last time they said ‘I’m not very sure about this, this isn’t my field of expertise’?’

Read here (Medium, Jules Evans, Mar 27, 2020)