Knowing How to Act Well in Time
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SYMPOSIUM: COVID-19
Knowing How to Act Well in Time Peter Wagner
Received: 16 April 2020 / Accepted: 3 August 2020 # Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Pty Ltd. 2020
Abstract Numerous scholars in the social sciences and humanities have speedily analysed and interpreted the COVID-19-induced social and political crisis. While the commitment to address an urgent topic is to be appreciated, this article suggests that the combination of confidence in the applicability of one’s tools and belief in the certainty of the available knowledge can be counterproductive in the face of a phenomenon that in significant respects is unprecedented. Starting out from the plurality of forms of knowledge that are mobilized to analyse COVID-19 and its consequences as well as the lack of any clearly hegemonic knowledge, the article tries to understand how a limited convergence in the politico-medical responses to the crisis emerged, and speculates on what would have happened if this had not been the case. In conclusion, it is argued that this pandemic demands a greater awareness of the uncertainty of our knowledge and of the consequences of our actions, both in terms of being situated in time and of aiming at timeliness.
P. Wagner Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain P. Wagner Ural Federal University, Yekaterinburg, Russia P. Wagner (*) Department of Sociology, University of Barcelona, Av. Diagonal, 690, E-08034 Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected]
Keywords Action . Covid-19 . Democracy . Knowledge . Pandemic . Technocracy . Time . Uncertainty
There is no shortage of analyses and interpretations of the crisis that the COVID-19 has inflicted on humankind and of its consequences. As it seems, many of my colleagues in the social sciences and humanities only had to take out their toolkit and put it to use on this new phenomenon. At times, one could even have the impression that they were waiting for something like this to happen for them to rush to go public with their analyses and proposals. Characteristically, the interpretations of the crisis come in two forms. The optimists hold that humankind will grow through this experience. The world after COVID-19 will show more solidarity, moral commitment, and concern for the common good. The era of unrestrained profit-making, boundless pleasure-seeking, and selfish pursuit of one’s goals without concern for others will come to an end. These observers call for action to grasp the unique occasion for creating a better world, unique because, for once, the world is already moving in that direction. In turn, the critics observe a crisis-driven move to authoritarianism, to new nationalism and restrictions to movement, to technocracy with political decisions based on expertise rather than deliberation, in short, the return to disciplinary society combined with isolation of individuals and loss of sociality. The short era of liberal democracy and convivial civil society during which the power of dominating groups
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