Views on the pandemic

- Giorgio Agamben’s theses as idealizations of the West

Abstract

Giorgio Agamben’s formulations about the global pandemic of covid-19 fostered a debate that relates the cognizable status of the plague with the political consequences of the measures adopted by national states in the fight against the disease. We noticed an embarrassing similarity between his thinking and the negationist ideas supported by the contemporary extreme right, verbalized by politicians like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. We intend to show that this is due to the unusual connection established between the postmodern field — in which Agamben is usually placed — and the tendencies towards the so-called post-truth. This connection derives, however, from dichotomies established since the dawn of modernity. In order to demonstrate this point, we take a theoretical journey that begins with an exposition of Agamben’s ideas about the pandemic. Then we try to show that such ideas have the ancient split between freedom and knowledge, established in a paradigmatic way by Immanuel Kant, as a kind of analytical background. From there on, we explain Hegel’s opposition to the separation between understanding and reason. By dissolving this false dichotomy, Hegel engenders the dialectical unity between practice and theory, subject and object, freedom and necessity. This elaboration provides the theoretical framework for thinking about overcoming the pandemic through the simultaneous and correlated action of scientific knowledge and the nation state, both of which being an expression of true and realistic collective freedom.