The conditions of life: Why philosophers are pushing back against the shutdown Dalia Nassar Tuesday 12 May 2020

June 13, 2020 - ABC

Dalia Nassar is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sydney, and the author of The Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing in Early German Romantic Philosophy, 1795-1804. You can hear her discuss the ethical and philosophical case against the prevailing political response to the COVID-19 pandemic with Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens on The Minefield.

What lessons, then, can environmentalists glean from the COVID-19 crisis?

The ideal response to a crisis must be capacious, context sensitive and democratic. It must take account of the complexity and many-sidedness of life and of the concrete lives of all living beings. It must consider differences across regions and cultures. Only in this way can we develop an adequate response to the environmental crisis: one that aims not to neglect, leave out, or put in harm’s way any of the beings that share this planet.

To develop an inclusive response requires careful thinking — thinking that demands that scientists work together with ethicists, political scientists, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers and anthropologists, to develop an ecological approach to the crisis. It also requires a transparent deliberative process, where citizens are not made passive, but are informed of how and why decisions are reached, and allowed to be involved in an open public debate.

To save lives, then, we must think of life not as an abstraction — which does not and cannot exist — but as a concrete reality that emerges through conditions and in relations. It means, ultimately, taking into account the fullness and diversity of the lives that we aim to protect.

Accordingly, we must think and act now. And we must do so together. The longer we wait, the more likely it is that we will have to make recourse to a quick and half-considered response, like the one we are witnessing now. And that is not what the environmental movement should aim for.