Role of Philosophy in the Pandemic

Submitted by :

Name : Sreejayaa Rajguru

College : Hindu College, University of Delhi

Course, Year : B.A. Philosophy (Hons), 3rd year

Email : nairitarajguru@gmail.com

Contact : 8638698348

Philosophy doesn't offer apparatuses for taking care of down to earth issues, yet
searches for a feeling of substantial circumstances through a levelheaded
reflection. In the current case this sense centers around:

1. Human delicacy (the infection can kill any individual);

2. Human weakness (our circumstance is basically indistinguishable with that of

antiquated plagues: our protection decreases us to detachment);

3. Restricted effectiveness of techno-science (the unequivocal treatment for this

sickness has not been found at this point, in spite of the endeavors of many
research facilities and drug organizations);

4. Rediscovery of normal great and human fortitude (the insurance of the people
is required for the assurance of society as well as the other way around);

5. The officeholder presence of death (in the light of which the progressive
system of qualities arranging human life can be reshaped).

Pondering about the pandemic? The very inquiry takes us completely into the
field of reasoning. We can think about the pandemic since we are alive. "cogito
ergo sum" "I think therefore I am" (Descartes, 2003). Being alive, we
experience the pandemic that compromises our reality and the actual chance of
mulling over everything. Despite the fact that, it should be said, we don't all
experience the pandemic similarly Is it conceivable to discover a relationship
between the spread of the infection and the spread of philosophical thoughts? It
is positively conceivable: theory, for instance, is like the infection in that it
pushes us to set needs and make us mindful of our limit, yet additionally in that
it compels us to present new issues. It is difficult to live without thoughts, not
on the grounds that we have or quit having thoughts, but since the thoughts are
having us. This happens on the grounds that reality itself forces certain thoughts
on us, if we like it. Indeed, even a basic infection can prepare a larger number of
thoughts than a way of thinking composition (Benarde, 1973).

Reasoning is sent through thoughts more often than not in an oral structure, and
furthermore infections, for example, Coronavirus, are communicated through
tiny drops of spit that emerge from the mouth, while their dissemination is
excessively quick to the point that even on account of thoughts it is utilized say
that they have become "viral". The infection, entering the body, goes about as a
perilous specialist that puts our wellbeing in danger. Theory doesn't enter the
body however into the brain, yet certain philosophical thoughts can likewise be
viewed as a danger to man, as occurred during some chronicled events: Socrates
was killed, on the grounds that his thoughts were considered as a danger to the
force constructions of the time (Platon, 2003). Exactly the same thing occurred
with Spinoza (Waterfield, 2009), whose thoughts prompted banishment from
his assemblage and social local area.

In this manner the scholar shows up (just as the infection) an "epidemos" in the
genuine Greek feeling of the word, that is, somebody who is in the "demos",
who flows among individuals of a specific local area and imperils their lives.
This is the reason theory and infections, whenever taken in disconnection, when
they spread in social orders can incite and decide significant changes in
mindset, when they review recently disregarded requirements and mindfulness
and in this manner they can significantly impact the course of history, for better
or in negative ways.

There are unconstrained inquiries that emerge despite the current circumstance
and which appear to be reducible to a solitary key one: What is reasoning for?
Or then again: "What have scholars written in the past even with a large number
of passings brought about by the occasion of a plague?" Some ask themselves
all the more solidly in what logicians can contribute, what compelling
commitment they have made or can provide for the arrangement of the issues
that are abusing us, as though they were a position of subject matter experts.
This point of view, as opposed to amplifying the figure of thinkers, reduces
them. Maybe the pandemic will serve to advise us that way of thinking can't be
decreased to any expert classification. Truth be told, no savant before has
composed straightforwardly on scourges or pandemics (maybe with the sole
special case of Camus who composed The plague (Camus, 1947), albeit
whatever as Fichte, Hegel, William of Ockham, the Mexican Sor Juana Inés de
la Cruz and probable St. Augustine also kicked the bucket during one of them.

The pandemic places us within the sight of the way that we would all be able to
be influenced and killed without qualification, paying little heed to age, sex,
even friendly conditions. The pandemic doesn't take a gander at anybody and
has shown that fragilty is a common state of the person accordingly. This is
significant on the grounds that, as current man developed, he lost the feeling of
his delicacy: he had the impression of continuously turning into the expert of
the world, of history and furthermore, of life, through the advancement of
medication, innovation and manners by which he could put together his reality.
Then again, we understand, and the pandemic has been exceptionally obvious
starting here of view, that this basic delicacy isn't totally killed.

At this first point another is associated: that of weakness. Weakness is

incompletely inseparable from delicacy, yet with an additional complement,
since who is defenseless is the person who can be harmed and this is significant
on the grounds that it demonstrates that the human condition is likewise
uncovered, aside from its underlying delicacy, to be additionally influenced.
This is what's going on today: we are influenced in our ordinary method of
living, we can presently don't do what we used to do and this whether or not we
need to go to emergency clinic and possibly lose our lives. A third point is that
of the feebleness of the individual, which is not quite the same as what we have
recently thought of. Feebleness implies being in the state of not having the
option to do anything considerable. How about we attempt to consider how we
are acting towards this pandemic and how individuals were acting 200,300,
1000 years prior. Essentially similarly: the main protection that we can offer is
separation in light of the fact that, in spite of all our advancement, this abrupt
appearance of a new, obscure infection is with the end goal that even the most
trend setting innovations we have accessible cold not help us.

All things considered, when they advise us to go out with veils, regarding the
wellbeing distances and keeping away from the infections relates to what in
particular individuals did at the hour of the Manzonian plague, of the plague
referenced by Boccaccio (Asor Rosa, 1992), of that described by Thucydides
(1996, etc … This reality is exceptionally critical on the grounds that the man
was step by step taking the disposition of the person who, offering time to time,
could do everything. There could have been presently not a feeling of natural
cutoff points. All things being equal, this experience is showing us that in the
most basic circumstances, like that of enduring an especially fierce sickness, we
can't respond significantly more adequately than by stowing away, or
disconnecting or securing ourselves as our old progenitors did.

This leads us to consider the reasons that gave man the impression of being
supreme. We would prefer not to belittle the advancement of science or
innovation: there is no question that today we know considerably more and far
superior to our grandparents, distant grandparents and precursors; that, yet that
we can do numerous things that our grandparents didn't envision. In any case,
this should not give us the feeling that we have turned into the bosses of life and
nature, that we have turned into the developers of our reality. No, man isn't the
developer of his own reality, man is as yet an animal, that is, a being, special
according to many perspectives, however who is in every case part of creation,
regardless of whether he has characteristics that permit him to advance from a
specific perspective endlessly. This should be particularly underlined today,
when there are philosophies that even envision proposing a future made by man
himself through innovation. I talk about transhumanism and posthumanism
which even come to estimate that man can go past himself, because of
innovations that he some way or another fuses. Be that as it may, where does he
consolidate them? He consolidates them into his body and in this manner he
considers changing his ontological constitution, as is said in way of thinking,
that is, his actual human substance.

One more angle on which we are welcome to reflect in the current circumstance
is that of fortitude, perceived as the defeating of individual narrow-mindedness
to think about the benefit of all, since it has been understood that the individual
alone can't resolve his issues : one should have the option to rely on a local area
and in this way has liabilities towards it. So the interest, the prosperity of the
singular winds up corresponding with the interest of society. Then again, we
can't consider advancing the advancement of society without the support of the
people who make it up. We have seen this even in a rudimentary case, that of
the commitment to go out with covers. The most well-known veils are not those
that shield the wearer from virus, but rather those that keep one from carrying
any microorganisms to the outside. It might appear to be that the individual
acknowledges the inconvenience of the cover for society, yet truly unmistakably
if everybody utilized the veils, he excessively would be shielded from infection.
It is an extremely fundamental model that causes us to see how this Covid
experience has caused us to find a vital measurement and a fundamental worth
of our present life.

The last part of this pandemic that constrained us to reflect was the presence of
death continually approaching. Contemporary society has attempted to
underestimate passing. Then again, in these months demise has been brought
under our look consistently and this has likewise driven us to recuperate the
most exact feeling of medication. The point of medication was customarily
considered to fix and recuperate wellbeing, since clearly passing was an
unavoidable normal reality. Today, then again, it appears to be that the primary
motivation behind medication is to overcome quick demise, to save the patient's
life even at the expense of sentencing the leftover part to a very agonizing state
according to many perspectives. The way that as of late we were placed within
the sight of such countless passings provoked us to consider the occasion of
death itself, that is, to believe that, when we show up at that point, we could ask
ourselves what sense our life had, what are the things for which it merited living
and what rather the people who have left no hint of themselves in our reality.

This also is a perspective on which theory has since quite a while ago reflected,
proposing chains of command of qualities of diverse sort. The current stuation
can assist us with pondering how it is smarter to live well realizing that this life
will have its end. In this sense, the job of reasoning would essentially be to
perceive one's natural cutoff points, to instruct to kick the bucket (both in a real
sense and emblematically as a section to a world unique in relation to what we
have known up until now). This is unquestionably a respectable practice of
theory going from Plato, Cicero, Seneca, to Montaigne and Schopenhauer and
then some; in any case, it depends on the possibility that in a troublesome
second, as we have effectively brought up, reasoning can't do much since its
undertaking isn't to discover answers for issues however just to show us how to
acknowledge them. "Whoever helped men to bite the dust would instruct them
to live," Montaigne noticed (Montaigne De, 2012).

For logicians who work in the field of morals and bioethics this pandemic
invigorates different reflections and likely opens up new fields of work. We
should begin by basically recognizing that there are no specialists on Covid-19
right now: everything is being educated in the field. Furthermore, regularly the
direness places specialists before troublesome decisions which they ought not
be obliged to make straightforwardly yet depending on conventions set up by an
assemblage of bioethics specialists who ought to plan new rules to settle on
morally mindful choices and to realize how to all the more likely spend
restricted accessible assets to work on the wellbeing of the populace and
legitimize the assets for clinical consideration.

A last perception that I might want to underline (and with this I finish up) is that
way of thinking and the pandemic instruct us that we are largely going through
in this life, yet additionally that the emergency (one more Greek idea presented
in medication by Hippocrates) prompts two potential results: backslide or
recuperation. Thus there isn't such a lot of distance between figuring out how to
kick the bucket and figuring out how to live. The sensation of dissatisfaction
and debilitation towards reasoning shouldn't win. The rationalist's undertaking
isn't to track down the importance of life or to tell others how they ought to live
however to give applied apparatuses valuable to the individuals who settle on
troublesome choices, in imparting and disclosing them to other people.
Assuming we see reasoning thusly, there is still a lot of work for rationalists to
do, in the current circumstance as well as, and maybe most importantly, later
on.

References :
1. https://en.unesco.org/news/importance-philosophy-times-crisis-theme-
world-philosophy-day-2020
2. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/coronavirus-how-can-philosophy-
help-us-in-this-time-of-crisis-1.4205889
3. https://dailynous.com/2020/03/27/role-philosophy-philosophers-
coronavirus-pandemic/
4. https://news.stanford.edu/2020/05/21/tuning-philosophy-humanities-
pandemic/
5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7462448/

Bibliography

https://philpapers.org/browse/pandemics