This book is the outcome of one of the most extensive international academic projects on the COVID-19 pandemic in the field of humanities and social sciences. It includes the reflections of scholars from 25 universities, in Europe, Asia, Canada, Australia, the US, and the UK, on 60 important philosophical and political questions. This paradigmatic volume is unique in the history of the humanities and social sciences in dealing with pandemics and should be considered as a starting point for more coherent and synergistic academic cooperation in preparation for similar future phenomena.
Pegah Mossleh is a physician, philosopher and political scientist and is currently a faculty member at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies (IHCS) in Tehran. He is the author of the book Principles of Political Theorizing (2019) and has translated the book Hegels Dialektik by Hans-Georg Gadamer from German to Persian in 2015.
Preface
Notes on Contributors
Introduction Questioning within the Roaring Waves of the Phenomenon Pegah Mossleh
part 1 Reflections on Living in the Pandemic Situation
1 Lessons We Have Learned
Charles Taylor
2 Historical Continuities and Historical Ruptures The Quest for “Lessons Learned” Jacalyn Duffin
3 How a Limit Situation Made Us All More Philosophical
Jean Grondin
part 2 Corona Phenomenon and Philosophical Questions
4 Corona-Pandemic from the Philosophical Perspective
Michael Quante
5 What Can the Corona Phenomenon Teach Us About Our Conceptions of Subject and Nature?
Anton Friedrich Koch
6 With the Emergence of the “Corona Phenomenon”, What Aspects of the Idea of Modern Subject Have Become More Visibly Problematic?
Frank Chouraqui
7 covid-19: Scientific and Ethical Ambiguity
Richard Bradley
8 On What the Real Moral Conflict in the covid-19 Pandemic Is – and What It Is Not
Sabine Döring
9 Lockdowns and Living Well Life-Value Ethics in the Age ofcovid-19 Jeffrey Noonan
10 Spirituality and the Role of Religion in the Contemporary Pandemic
Neal DeRoo
11 The Consequences of the Pandemic for Our Lives and for Philosophical Anthropology
David Weberman
12 Corona Phenomenon, The Gateway to the Era of Post-Reactionary-Criticism
Pegah Mossleh
part 3 Corona Phenomenon and Political Questions
13 In What Sense Is the “Corona Phenomenonˮ Political?
Paul Patton
14 The Impact of covid-19 on Federal Countries
David Cameron
15 Is a Virus a Dispositif? Pandemics as Thanatopolitics Eduardo Mendieta
16 Speaking Truth to Power Political Courage in the Age ofcovid-19 Martin Breaugh
17 States of Crisis Pandemic, Policing—and Resistance Jeff Shantz
18 Will covid-19 Health Emergency Be the Pretext to Further Transform the EU Legal Order? Importance and Present Relevance of Walter Benjamin’s State of Emergency Analysis Vicente Ordóñez Roig
19 sars-cov-2 What Role for Political Philosophy? Beatrice Magni
20 Reflections from Perfidious Albion The Pandemic as Prism Huw L. Williams
21 The Potential Subjective and Objective Consequences of covid-19 on the Process of Democratization in the Maghreb
Ewa Szczepankiewicz-Rudzka
part 4 Corona Phenomenon and Interdisciplinary Questioning
22 The Plague, The Anthropocene, and covid-19
Marcel Wissenburg
23 covid-19 and Identity
Georgia Warnke
24 Three Questions of Distributive Justice
Christopher Lowry
25 covid-19, Poverty, and Imperialism Epidemics and Syndemics in Historical Perspective Spyros Marchetos
26 Information and Human Behavior in Times of covid-19
Marcel Becker
Index
The main audiences of this book are academics, including professors and students in all fields, especially in philosophy and political science. However, the book may also be insightful for readers outside of academia.