Description
In the past, pandemics were considered divine punishment, but we now understand the biological characteristics of viruses and we know they are spread through social interaction. What used to be divine has become human - all too human, as Nietzsche would say.
But while the virus dispels the divine, we are discovering that living beings are more complex and harder to define than we had previously imagined, and also that political power is more complex than we may have thought. And this, argues Nancy, helps us to see why the term 'biopolitics' fails to grasp the conditions in which we now find ourselves. Life and politics challenge us together. Our scientific knowledge tells us that we are dependent only on our own technical power, but can we rely on technologies when knowledge itself includes uncertainties? If this is the case for technical power, it is much more so for political power, even when it presents itself as guided by objective data.
The virus is a magnifying glass that reveals the contradictions, limitations and frailties of the human condition, calling into question as never before our stubborn belief in progress and our hubristic sense of our own indestructibility as a species.
Author: Jean-Luc Nancy
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 01/04/2022
Pages: 100
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 7.40h x 4.80w x 0.50d
ISBN13: 9781509550227
ISBN10: 1509550224
BISAC Categories:
- Philosophy | General
About the Author
Jean-Luc Nancy is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Strasbourg and teaches Political Philosophy and Media Aesthetics at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee.