The Corona pandemic not only infects the respiratory system of people living with the virus, but it also reshapes human societies and forces us to rethink the way we live and how we communicate and interact with others.
The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben believes that the pandemic - which poses the greatest threat to human security since the Spanish flu a century ago - makes our common humanity a potential security threat, as the enemy inside us this time is not an external threat, as people see each other as expected carriers of the virus.
The need for debt
In his article published on the Italian book showcase Codelept, Agamben sees a growing need for religion that is evident in the present time. The Italian philosopher inferred by observing the terms borrowed from other eschatological religious vocabulary that is used in an obsessed and frequent manner in various media outlets - especially the American press - that constantly uses the term 'end of the world' expressions.
Agamben goes on to say that the need for religion - which the church was no longer able to fulfill - was groping its way into an alternate habitat, until it finally found it in what became known as the 'religion of the age', meaning science, as he put it.
Italian philosopher Agamben views the emergency measures taken by governments as irrational and unjustified (Getty Images)
According to the Italian philosopher and legal theorist, 'science' in our time 'is similar to religions in its ability to produce myths and fears' in times of crisis, he said. He continues, 'We are currently witnessing various scientific prescriptions and different positions ranging from a heretical minority (also represented by well-known scholars) denying the seriousness of the phenomenon, and a prevailing Orthodox discourse confirming its real danger, yet often they differ radically in how to deal with the matter and combat the pandemic.'
As is always the case in these matters, some experts, or those who serve the interests of the authority that imposes its precautionary measures, stand with a certain tendency that tends to this or that point of view, and is similar to the times of religious conflicts that divided Christianity when the experts stood, for their own interests, with a trend or Another, as Agamben put it.
Another thing that disrupts thinking is the apparent collapse and blunt disintegration of all convictions and beliefs, according to the Italian philosopher who believes that people 'no longer believe in anything other than existence and the bare (abstract) biological life, which must be preserved at all costs.'
In a previous article, Agamben criticized what he called the 'Italians' willingness to sacrifice everything - including ordinary life, their social relationships, work, friendships, and religious and political beliefs - to avoid the risk of developing Corona infection.'
Agamben believes that this common danger does not unite people but rather blind them and isolate them from each other, as humans are currently seen as a source of contagion and a potential danger, warning that 'the fear of losing a life is easy to build upon a brutal tyranny', invoking the image of a demonic loyathan known in Christian and Judaism.
The Italian philosopher is famous for his book, 'The State of Exclusion ... The Sacred Man', which considers that the authorities use exceptional circumstances to justify the disruption of the law and the possession of absolute power, indicating their transformation into a permanent state even in democratic constitutional systems.
Agamben's article sparked enormous controversy among European philosophers, and the famous Slovenian philosopher Slavoy Cicek responded that the Italian philosopher's reaction is a hard line of the common leftist position to view panic and panic as an authoritarian exercise of control, control, and racism.
Agamben discussed in his book the relationship between law and exclusion and the possibility of constitutionalizing the exception or codifying it in the liberal legal system (Al-Jazeera)
Panic and isolation
The author and professor of Italian political philosophy, Massimo de Carrolls, believes that the measures of prohibition and social divergence are worrying.
De Caroles continues that the crucial point is to show whether the measures are temporary or whether we are witnessing instead a general test of what can become a normal state of life in near future societies.
The Italian academic justifies his doubts 'by the fact that the destruction of social ties and control in the name of' public health 'certainly did not come with the emerging virus. For at least a century, modern social mechanisms tend to create a society based on isolation, where the spontaneity of social life is seen as an obstacle or even a threat For the stability of the system. '
While the production system in the past did not work without people getting together, mixing, and making voices and hands together, but today people can be separated and isolated due to technology, stressing at the same time that social changes are not the product of a conspiracy but rather the outcome of different factors and forces.
For his part, Italian philosopher and writer Sergio Benvenuto commented that the panic that befell his country was essentially a political choice, because in an era in which great democracies produce “ugly leaders”, international organizations - such as the World Health Organization - are taking decisions that will correct the fascist whims of new fascism in Democracies today, according to his article, translated from Italian by the European Journal of Psychoanalysis.
The Italian philosopher notes that in the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, political power acted in exactly the opposite way, hiding the epidemic, because in most cases the countries concerned were in a state of war, and the flu was called 'Spanish' simply because at that time, and only in Spain - which was not In case of war - the media reported the disease, which appears to have originated in the United States.
But today's political forces - who assert that they cross borders and the economy and transcend national borders - pursue a strategy of panic, to encourage people to isolate the virus. Indeed, isolating the injured is still - centuries later - the best strategy to suppress intractable epidemics, as leprosy was contained in Europe - as French philosopher Michel Foucault also emphasizes - precisely by isolating the injured as much as possible, often on remote islands.
Source: Italian press, Al-Jazeera, websites
