Philosophy Archives - Contemporary Humanism

Fraternity and Supererogation (Stefano Biancu)

Pope Francis’ encyclical “Fratelli tutti” proposes the so-called parable of the Good Samaritan[1] as the paradigm of a fraternity understood as a social friendship (see Fratelli tutti, n. 56-86). This proposal is of interest to the moral philosopher for at least a couple of reasons.

The first reason is that the Samaritan’s attitude is presented as a moral example which is not only valid for Christians, but for everyone, regardless of their religious beliefs. The second reason is that that attitude is considered valid, not only in the private sphere of interpersonal relationships, but also as a paradigm of a new form of citizenship.

These statements are not obvious at all. The Samaritan’s attitude is traditionally considered the emblem of “supererogation”. This is a technical term which indicates those actions and attitudes which, while being morally good, are however not strictly required. This area of actions and attitudes has long been considered beyond ethics and beyond the call of duty which is typical of modern citizenship.

The notion of Supererogation

The history of the concept of supererogation[2] has its origins precisely in the parable of the Good Samaritan and, in particular, in the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Christian Bible dating back to the 4^th century. In the instructions the Samaritan gives the innkeeper so that he takes care, in his absence, of the unfortunate pilgrim, the Vulgata reads: “Curam illius habe, et, quodcumque supererogaveris, ego, cum rediero, reddam tibi” (Lk 10:35). The Latin verb “supererogaveris” is translated, in the current versions of the biblical text, by the periphrasis “whatever more you spend”. Supererogation has therefore to do with a “surplus” and, in particular, with an additional cost, an extra expense. This is why the attitude of the Samaritan has traditionally become the emblem of supererogation.

Starting from the Gospel, the Fathers of the Church have introduced the term into the technical language of theology, referring it to actions recommended by spiritual tradition, but contrary to natural inclinations, such as fast and chastity.[3] But it is only with Thomas Aquinas that the term became relevant.[4] According to Aquinas, a good moral action can be either commanded or advised. That is, it can be the object of either an obligation (the sphere of “praecepta”) or a recommendation (the sphere of “consilia”, such as chastity, poverty, obedience). This second category includes supererogatory actions, i.e. actions which, while being morally positive, are beyond the call of duty. According to Aquinas, counsels are morally superior to commandments. If the latter concern what is good, the former concern a better good. Aquinas’ perspective on supererogation became canonical, remaining substantially unchanged for a few centuries, at least until Luther and the other Reformers.[5] In their eyes, supererogatory actions took the shape of human claims to obtain salvation thanks to one’s own merits.

In the following centuries, the notion of supererogation lost its relevance and centrality, both in theology and philosophy, at least until 1958, when the British philosopher James Urmson published his short essay Saints and Heroes.[6] Urmson’s thesis goes as follows: moral philosophy has traditionally disregarded two types of actions, the saintly and the heroic ones. Such actions would not fall in the commonly accepted classification, according to which moral actions would be divided into (1) morally right obligatory actions, (2) morally wrong prohibited actions, (3) morally neutral permitted actions. Saintly and heroic actions do not fit in this classification as long as they are morally good actions which are not obligatory, not due nor demandable. More precisely, although they may be perceived as mandatory from a first person perspective (i.e. by the subject at the moment of deliberation), they are not so from a third person perspective (i.e. from the point of view of an external observer). According to Urmson, compared to the “basic moral duties”, those actions would represent “the higher flights of morality”. Following Urmson’s pioneering article, a huge debate has opened up in Anglo-Saxon moral philosophy about the concept of supererogation: about its definition, about the taxonomy of supererogatory actions and attitudes, about the paradoxes inherent in the notion.[7]

What is interesting for us is that the encyclical “Fratelli tutti” places supererogatory attitudes and acts – of which the Good Samaritan is a moral example – as a paradigm not only of ethics, but of a new form of citizenship. What can the moral philosopher say about this claim?

Rethinking the notion of duty

As I have tried to show elsewhere,[8] taking the notion of supererogation seriously requires to rethink the notion of duty. In particular, I think it is necessary to distinguish at least three different levels of the experience of duty.

A first experience of duty is situated at a legal level: my duty corresponds either to the respect of the right of another person or to what is established by a law. This kind of duty is intended to protect freedom and human rights, which are supposed to be an original human feature, as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights puts it, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (article 1). By setting boundaries and limitations, legal duties aim at protecting everybody’s original freedom and rights.

A second experience of duty is situated at an ethical level. A form of responsibility comes up at each encounter between humans. Not only I am responsible for my own actions (which I might be asked to justify), but I am someway responsible for the other’s life and destiny.[9] An implicit call for love is present in each human encounter and I have to respond as suitably as possible to this call.

A third experience of duty is situated at an anthropological level. At this level, the idea according to which all human beings are born free is an abstraction.[10] Humans are born able to be free, but they actually need to become free. Freedom has its own genealogy and conditions, and love is one of these conditions. Not only I need to be free in order to love someone, but I also need to receive and give love in order to become free. Only if I act out of love – love for myself and for others – I can truly be free.

Supererogation is beyond the call of duty at a legal level, i.e. beyond what the moral agent might be required to do by either a law or the respect of a third person’s rights. At this level, no one has the right to bother me by asking me to love them (i.e. to forgive, to be generous, to give my life for someone…).

But supererogation is not beyond the call of duty at an ethical level: I have to respond as suitably as I can to the call for love of my neighbour, since both their and my destiny depends on my response. This is what Jaspers called a “metaphysical” responsibility, based on an original solidarity among humans.[11]

Supererogation is not beyond the call of duty on an anthropological level either. At this level, duty is what I actually need in order to become free, to actually become a subject. Something is due to the extent that it is a condition of my subjectivity and liberty. I become subject by freely and suitably responding to someone who in some way bothers me by asking me for love.

According to a very traditional view, supererogation is beyond the call of duty and (therefore) beyond ethics. The implicit presupposition of this view is that duty has in itself a legal shape: it corresponds to the respect of a third person’s right or to what is established by a law. But we need to enlarge our understanding of duty, by seeing it also as a necessary condition of possibility (of freedom, of subjectivity, of humanity…). Being one of these conditions of possibility, supererogation exceeds the mere legal understanding of duty, but not duty itself. It therefore becomes in all respects, an ethical phenomenon.

In other words: supererogation can be considered as a “maximum” if compared to the “minimum” which cannot and must not be missing – i.e. the area of what is demanded either by a law or by the respect of a third person’s rights. Since it is one of the conditions of freedom and subjectivity, this “maximum” is nevertheless someway “necessary” – the liberal State needs citizens who are truly free human subjects.

By contributing to create truly human and free subjects, the supererogatory attitude of the Good Samaritan – a fraternity understood as a social friendship – fulfils those premises on which the liberal State lives without being able to guarantee them by itself.[12] With good reason, it can be thus considered an ethical phenomenon and the core of a new form of citizenship.

[1] Lk 10:25-37.

[2] See. D. Heyd, Supererogation. Its Status in Ethical Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1982, part 1 (The view of some major ethical theories); J. Janiaud, Au-delà du devoir. L’acte surérogatoire, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Rennes 2007, ch. III (Petit parcours historique).

[3] See. D. Dentsoras, The Birth of Supererogation, «Epoché. A Journal for the History of Philosophy», Vol. 18, Issue 2, 2014, pp. 351-372.

[4] See. D. Witschen, Zur Bestimmung supererogatorischer Handlungen: der Beitrag des Thomas von Aquin, «Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie», 1-3, 51 (2004), pp. 27-40.

[5] See M. Konrad, Precetti e consigli: studi sull’etica di san Tommaso d’Aquino a confronto con Lutero e Kant, Lateran University Press, Roma 2005, pp. 119-140.

[6] See J.O. Urmson, Saints and Heroes (1958), in J. Feinberg (ed.), Moral Concepts, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1969, pp. 60-73.

[7] See A. Archer, Supererogation, «Philosophy Compass», Vol. 13, Issue 3 (March 2018); C. Cowley, Introduction: The Agents, Acts and Attitudes of Supererogation, in Id. (ed), Supererogation, (Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, Volume 77 – October 2015), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2015, pp. 1-23; D. Heyd, Supererogation, in E.N. Zalta (ed), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2016 Edition (https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/supererogation).

[8] See S. Biancu, Il massimo necessario. L’etica alla prova dell’amore, Mimesis, Milano 2020; Id., Héros et saints : un autre (trans)humanisme, «Transversalités», 153, 2020, pp. 25-39.

[9] See E. Levinas, Totalité et Infini, Nijhoff, La Haye 1961; B. Waldenfelds, Topographie des Fremden. Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden 1, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 1997; Id., Bruchlinien der Erfahrung, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 2002.

[10] See J.-M. Ferry, Les Grammaires de l’intelligence, Cerf, Paris, 2004, p. 201.

[11] See K. Jaspers, Die Schuldfrage. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Frage, Artemis, Zürich 1946, p. 11.

[12] See E.-W. Böckenförde, Die Entstehung des Staates als Vorgang der Säkularisation [1967], in Id., Recht, Staat, Freiheit. Studien zur Rechtsphilosophie, Staatstheorie und Verfassungsgeschichte, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 2006, pp. 92-114: 112 («Der freiheitliche, säkularisierte Staat lebt von Voraussetzungen, die er selbst nicht garantieren kann»).

Originally published on Educa. International Catholic Journal of Education. Download here this article.

Peter Howard – Flourishing and humanists in Renaissance Florence

Peter Howard, the Director of the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry (IRCI) at the Australian Catholic University, gives a seminar on “Flourishing and Humanists in Renaissance Florence”. Click on the image to watch the video.

Chiara Pesaresi – Riflessioni sulla vulnerabilità

La lezione si è tenuta il 16 febbraio 2022 nel contesto del dottorato internazionale “Contemporary Humanism”. Attraverso un percorso storico e teorico, la prof. Chiara Pesaresi, responsabile della cattedra “Vulnerabilités” dell’Université Catholique de Lyon (Francia), è intervenuta sul tema della vulnerabilità, nozione all’intersezione tra il pubblico e il privato. Per vedere il video della lezione, cliccare qui.

Fundamental Freedoms and the Problem of Freedom (Stefano Biancu)

For more than a year now, we have been witnessing the biggest limitation of fundamental freedoms since the Second World War, at least in Europe and in many democratic countries. Limitations on social life, on traveling, on worship have become daily life for us. An unprecedented limitation of freedoms (in the plural) urges us to question ourselves about the nature of freedom (in the singular): what does it mean to be free?

The Ideal and the Concept of Freedom

When you lose something, you often learn the hard way how important it was what you had taken for granted. Today, in the midst of a long health emergency, being confined and limited in many ways, we perceive how essential freedom is. At the same time, we find it hard to say what is this freedom that we miss so much. The ideal of freedom is clear: we all agree on how important freedom is. But the concept of freedom is complex and someway mysterious: it is not easy to say what freedom really is.

Freedom is certainly a set of simple things: gathering with family and friends, traveling, going to the cinema or to an art exhibition, having a coffee sitting at a bar table, eating a pizza with friends, moving around, taking a walk under the stars in the middle of the night, not being forced to wear a mask. We understand all this very well: it is what we miss. But we are aware that freedom is not just that.

To try to understand what freedom is, let’s start with a distinction that has become a classic: the distinction between negative and positive freedom. It is a distinction already proposed by Immanuel Kant,[1] but which has become a classic after the famous inaugural lecture on “Two Concepts of Liberty” that sir Isaiah Berlin gave at Oxford University in 1958.[2]

Negative and Positive Freedom

Negative freedom is the mere absence of external limits or interference. It is therefore a freedom that has to do with society and which concerns the action of the agent. It corresponds to what is lawful and allowed. Negative freedom – to which Berlin gives a preference in the political sphere – can be easily understood in the plural (in the sense of the fundamental freedoms). As the absence of external constraints, negative freedom is now vastly more limited than it was before the pandemic.

Instead, positive freedom can be understood in terms of self-control and self-determination. It concerns the will of the agent and it corresponds to autonomy, in the sense of the power of the subject to give norms to themselves.

Positive freedom is complex. It is certainly to be understood as free will, that is, the ability to choose between different options. In this sense, it is an innate capacity of the human being. This capacity is very much discussed today in the debate on determinism raised by the neurosciences. For now, there is no philosophical or scientific evidence that allows us to deny this fundamental human ability. In the absence of this evidence, I firmly believe that we must assume this capacity exists. Especially in that the possibility of moral, legal and political responsibility is based on this same capacity.

Love and then do what you want

But positive freedom is not just free will, that is, the formal and innate possibility of choosing between different options, of doing what you want. Positive freedom is also an ability of autonomy which develops over time. It is not the mere possibility for the agent to do what they want, but it is the ability for the subject to truly want to do what they do, to fully own their actions. In this sense, freedom is being one with yourself, fulfilling your own humanity.

Let’s think about Saint Augustine’s iconic formulation of freedom – “Dilige et quod vis fac” (Love and then do what you want).[3] Only superficially freedom is the empty possibility of loving or not loving (or even hating).

Only if you act motivated by love, you are truly free. When you act out of fear, resentment, envy, vice, you may act within a space of non-constraint and free choice between different options, but you don’t feel like you are really free, you don’t feel like you are one with yourself. You don’t feel like you really want to do what you do. You are truly free only if you act motivated by love – love for yourself and love for your neighbour.

The first article of 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. This statement is to be understood as a regulative ideal and not as a matter of fact.[4] It is not true at all the human beings are born free and equal.

From a legal and political point of view, freedom must be understood as an innate right to be protected. Negative freedom must protect the innate free will of the human being. Human beings are born capable of free will, but freedom understood as being one with yourself is an achievement for them. Freedom is also a path to take.

Neoliberal Freedom

Today we are facing a neoliberal and very pervasive idea of freedom. A freedom which presents itself as the opposite of constraint, but which actually generates constraint itself. In 2014 Korean philosopher based in Germany Byung-Chul Han published his book “Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power”.[5] In this book, Byung-Chul Han states that the neoliberal subject sees themselves as a project which is free from obligations and constraints imposed by others.

Nevertheless, being in competition with all their fellow humans, this subject forces themselves to efficiency and ends up submitting to internal obligations and self-imposed constraints. Believing themselves to be free, the individual is in reality a servant who exploits themselves. As Byung-Chul Han points out, “Neoliberalism represents a highly efficient, indeed an intelligent, system for exploiting freedom”. “People who fail in the neoliberal achievement-society see themselves as a responsible for their lot and feel shame instead of questioning society or the system”.

With respect to the neoliberal project, it is evident that a purely negative freedom – which aims to limit as much as possible the external constraints of freedom – does not guarantee in itself the quality and the strength of freedom. Freedom is not only the possibility to do what you want. As Byung-Chul Han shows it, this kind of freedom can put the subject against themselves.

More deeply, freedom should be understood as the ability for the subject to want to do what they do, to be one with their own will and action. Freedom is the capacity for the subject to fully own themselves, and therefore to completely realize themselves. Only this way we will all be equal because we will all be enabled to completely fulfil our own humanity. Only love – love for ourselves and love for our neighbours – allows us to reach our humanity and autonomy.

This means that we should teach our children how to be truly free, how to be happy, not how to be successful.

Democracy and Freedom

Even on a political level, freedom cannot be understood as mere indifference, as mere possibility to think or not to think. Democracy not only guarantees freedom of action and thought, but presupposes and needs citizens that are truly capable of free action and thought. The democratic form of sovereignty can only be achieved if citizens are fully in control of themselves, of their wishes and needs – if they are truly free.[6]

A people incapable of controlling their wishes and needs produces a democracy of slaves. Otherwise, the free and active democratic participation is reduced to a list of complaints. The citizen is transformed into a passive consumer.[7]

In these times, when negative freedom is much more limited than it used to be before the pandemic, we can take the opportunity to work towards the development of a more positive freedom. A kind of freedom which is the ability for the subject to truly become themselves, to be one with themselves. A kind of freedom which is not mere indifference, not a mere possibility either to love or not to love, either to think or not to think.

Negative freedom is a precondition of love, but love is a precondition of positive freedom. “Love and then do what you want”.

References

Biancu (2020), Il massimo necessario. L’etica alla prova dell’amore, Mimesis, Milano 2020

Biancu (2021a), “Libertà”, in Dizionarietto di politica. Le nuove parole, Morcelliana, Brescia 2021

Biancu (2021b), “Libertà, invenzione (e manutenzione) di un concetto”, Munera. Rivista europea di cultura, 2/2021

[1] See Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785).

[2] See I. Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty (1958), in Id., Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford University Press, London 1967, n. ed. in Liberty, H. Hardy (ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002; I. Carter, Positive and Negative Liberty, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2019 Ed., https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/liberty-positive-negative/.

[3] See Epistolam Joannis ad Parthos, tractatus 7, sect. 8; PL 35, 2033.

[4] See J.-M. Ferry, Les Grammaires de l’intelligence, Cerf, Paris 2004, p. 201.

[5] See B.-C. Han, Psychopolitik. Neoliberalismus und die neuen Machttechniken, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt 2014.

[6] See E.-W. Böckenförde, Die Entstehung des Staates als Vorgang der Säkularisation (1967), in Id., Recht, Staat, Freiheit. Studien zur Rechtsphilosophie, Staatstheorie und Verfassungsgeschichte, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 2006, pp. 92-114.

[7] See B.-C. Han, Psychopolitik. Neoliberalismus und die neuen Machttechniken, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt 2014.

(Presentation at the SIIAEC online Conference 2021 on “Ethical Action: COVID Affecting Human Rights and Democracy”, April 30 – May 1, 2021)

Humanism and Phenomenology (Jérôme de Gramont)

Jérôme de Gramont, professor of Philosophy at the Institut Catholique de Paris, gives a seminar on Humanism and Phenomenology in dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas.

Intergenerational Justice and the Pandemic

A webinar on the pandemic and its challenges to intergenerational justice took place on 4 December.

Stefano Biancu, Caterina Fiorilli, Fabio Macioce, Ferdinando Menga, Laura Palazzani, Matteo Rizzolli, Vincenzo Schirripa, and all the doctoral students discussed this this challenging topic from an interdisciplinary point of view.

The program.

The poster.

The video.

“I respectfully disagree with Agamben” (Slavoj Žižek on Covid-19) – Aleksander Adamski

Some years ago, Slavoj Žižek was asked to discuss a shattering, traumatic event, an event widely believed to hold world-historic consequence. Žižek began with the following, general qualification:

“When one hears this phrase: ‘nothing will be the same,’ the first approach of a truly thinking person is simply to doubt this.”^[1]

The conclusion to be drawn from this remark is that although Pandemic!, the short book of reflections on the Covid crisis that Žižek published in May 2020, was obviously put together at speed, it is not an impulsive first approach. For Žižek, this time round, does think that change is inevitable, and will prove lasting. In wake of the pandemic, writes Žižek,

“We will have to change our entire stance to life, to our existence as living beings among other forms of life. In other words, if we understand “philosophy” as the name for our basic orientation in life, we will have to experience a true philosophical revolution.”^[2]

At first approach, and not just to the average ironically distanced philosopher, such a statement reads grossly overblown; in fact, there is nothing overwrought about Pandemic!, which is a serious, almost solemn pamphlet. The philosophical revolution it heralds amounts, of course, to the ethical position Žižek has been elaborating for years, namely a rigorous, conscientious, atheist Christianity. But there is nothing vindictive in Žižek’s delivery, no perceptible delectatio morosa in the fact that an epidemic has, in a number of ways, proven him right.

First and foremost, the pandemic validates Žižek’s appeals for communism. Perhaps to the dismay of his belligerent followers (though most of those have long forsaken him), Žižek takes communism to stand for an attempt to institutionalise (and enforce) basic human decency – and the broad definition needn’t be snubbed at.^[3] Pandemic! contains a number of simple — no other are needed — argument-examples for the sensibility of collective action (the virus spreads across jurisdictions) and the nonsense of market forces (that incite speculation on the rising price of protective equipment). The book notes how the reality of a situation which boils down to biological survival has bent (if not quite broken) some ideological fantasies and forced even the most reactionary governments to introduce at least tokens of universal income (USA) or nationalisation (UK):

“This is not a utopian Communist vision, it is a Communism imposed by the necessities of bare survival. (…) As the saying goes: in a crisis we are all Socialists. (…) Trillions will be spent violating all conventional market rules.”^[4]

In short, Žižek believes there is a chance that the present predicament will cut across ideological distortions and lay bear the old, essential alternative: socialisme ou barbarie.

II
Second, the pandemic proves we need a strong, resolute state, something Žižek has long been arguing for (while, to a degree, making the case against ‘civil society’ – or what in reality may well be a reactionary, bigoted, anti-vaccine, homophobic ‘moral majority,’ from which the force of the state should protect us). In this context, the question of invigilation arises, and provokes the first disagreement with Agamben:^[5] in the form of a simple cui bono? Žižek dismisses a reading of the pandemic in the lines of a bio-political state of exception and overtly approves of military discipline in the face of crisis. The crucial work lies in maintaining a spirit of trust between the people and a (powerful) system of state:

“(…) the measures necessitated by the epidemic should not be automatically reduced to the usual paradigm of surveillance and control propagated by thinkers like Foucault. What I fear today more than the measures applied by China and Italy is that they apply these measures in a way that will not work and contain the epidemic, and that the authorities will manipulate and conceal the true data.”^[6]

Against Agamben and Foucault, Žižek recalls Kant’s injunction apropos the laws of the state: “Obey, but think, maintain the freedom of thought!” In practice, though, Žižek has to concede that some of those doing the thinking must at times make the choice to disobey; for such a contingency “(…) new activists following in the shoes of Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are needed.”^[7]

III

Pandemic! takes issue with the preposition that an epidemic alleged to affect mostly the elderly invites a relapse into a ‘vitalist’ logic of survival of the fittest. While Žižek fully acknowledges the risk Agamben points out – in short: that decency, dignity, and religious convictions will be readily sacrificed for the preservation of ‘bare life’ – his own stance is surprisingly hopeful. Citing acts of solidarity and the massive engagement of volunteers, especially in Italy, Žižek points out that the threat of death actually can be a uniting force, or at least that the matter is ambiguous, and barbarity is not the only possible outcome. For Žižek, there isn’t a shadow of doubt that the proper ethical injunction is contra-vitalistic and anti-utilitarian, it amounts to the call ‘all hands on board:’

“(…) our first principle should be not to economize but to assist unconditionally, irrespective of costs, those who need help, to enable their survival.”^[8]

The pandemic and the ensuing enforced isolation have had positive effects in terms of self-reflection. This is a point Žižek is at great pains to contextualist correctly, and Pandemic! not only acknowledges (at considerable length) the all too real suffering, but repeatedly stresses the entanglement of the migrant, race, and ecological crises with the epidemic. Žižek well understands the social stratifications behind the sort of work that can be done remotely and work we call ‘essential,’ he also touches on the danger of widespread, long-term challenges to mental health. Still, taking his cue from Catherine Malabou,^[9] Žižek ponders the ‘epoché’ effect of enforced solitude. At their simplest, the reflections of a meditative lock-down are readily accessible, practically irrefutable: what good is an economic system that collapses the moment we buy only what we really need? Of the vulgar indulgence proper to so-called cruise-ships, Žižek writes succinctly:

“We should not be afraid to note some potentially beneficial side effects of the epidemic. One of the lasting symbols of the epidemic is passengers trapped in quarantine on large cruise ships. Good riddance to the obscenity of such ships say I (…).”^[10]

This and other examples point to a simple conclusion: a pandemic epoché reveals that our past ‘normal’ was in fact a-normal throughout: “why do we want things to go back to normal, when in fact things have never been normal?” More still, the ‘dead time’ of withdrawal into lock-down may bring about — to the privileged few, Žižek acknowledges — the sort of ‘Gelassenheit’ that reveals, behind the hectic struggle of everyday life, the basic nonsense of our predicament.^[11]

The ‘absolute’ ethical stance of unconditional commitment, together with an epoché that undermines the edifice of symbolic (or ideological) meaning, are all proper to the sort of materialist Christian position that Slavoj Žižek has been putting forward for the past twenty years. Uncannily, the current discipline of so-called ‘social distancing’ chimes perfectly with Žižek’s ideal of an ethical community – one need only recall Žižek’s perhaps best-known formulation of this position, from an exchange with John Milbank published in 2011:

“This is where I stand — how I would love to be: an ethical monster without empathy, doing what is to be done in a weird coincidence of blind spontaneity and reflexive distance, helping others while avoiding their disgusting proximity. With more people like this, the world would be a pleasant place in which sentimentality would be replaced by a cold and cruel passion.”^[12] (emphasis mine)

Pandemic! recalls John 20:17, Christ’s answer to Mary Magdalene: do not touch me, noli me tangere. The point being that, for Žižek, solidarity appears at the point where we acknowledge that we are all alone – and only as such, are all together. Paradoxically, authentic community is brought about by isolation. This, an idea of Žižek’s voiced a decade ago, is yet another point of his thinking that the pandemic appears to vindicate.

An even more basic ‘Hegelian’ arching of opposites in an ‘infinite judgement’ occurs in how, as Žižek observes, the very lowest iteration of life, the blindly self-replicating virus, provokes the very highest, namely the ‘Holy Spirit’ of universal human communion in solidarity.

Renouncing the pose of philosophical distancing and facile scepticism, Slavoj Žižek chose, in his booklet of reflections on the pandemic, to voice hope. Giving the unfolding of events since May, the reader is left wondering whether this attitude can possibly hold. The anticipation his book provokes is certainly not lost on Žižek: granted the pandemic has proven him right on so many counts – will it not prove him wrong just now, on his grand bet on solidarity and change? The second part of Pandemic! is due for publishing in September.

[1] Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly, Conversations with Žižek, 1 edition (Cambridge, UK : Malden, MA: Polity, 2003) p 157.

^[2] Slavoj Žižek, Pandemic!: COVID-19 Shakes the World (Polity, 2020) p 78.

^[3] Žižek-scholars have been wary of looming ‘functional conservatism’ in Žižek’s writings since the early 2000s, and especially in his rapprochement with Christianity. The ‘problem’ of Žižek’s conservatism is, to the mind of the present author, a paragon of warped tunnel vision endemic to the modern campus.

^[4] Žižek (2020), pp 92, 93.

^[5] Agamben’s much-publicised remarks on the pandemic are accessible in Italian: https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-l-invenzione-di-un-epidemia and in English: http://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/coronavirus-and-philosophers/. Additional ‘clarifications’ added at a later date in Italian https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-chiarimenti and in Adam Kotsko’s translation https://itself.blog/2020/03/17/giorgio-agamben-clarifications/.

^[6] Žižek (2020), p 76.

^[7] Comp. Žižek (2020), pp 7, 66, 75.

^[8] Žižek (2020), p 87.

^[9] Malabou’s quarantine reflections (English): https://critinq.wordpress.com/2020/03/23/to-quarantine-from-quarantine-rousseau-robinson-crusoe-and-i/

^[10] Žižek (2020), p 45.

^[11] Žižek (2020), p 57.

^[12] Slavoj Žižek and others, The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?, ed. by Creston Davis, Reprint edition (Cambridge, Mass. London, England: The MIT Press, 2011) p 303.

The Pandemic – an Intellectual Challenge

At least at our latitudes, the Covid-19 pandemic represented an absolute and radical novelty. Not even the most elderly among us, who have witnessed immense tragedies such as war, have ever experienced anything like this. In a short period of time everything changed under the threat of a terrible and invisible enemy: lifestyles, educational systems, the labor market, public policies, and international relations. Nothing seems to be the same as before: a new normal, still characterized by many uncertainties, has imposed itself on a global level. The whole world has been touched by it. In this sense, the pandemic represents a testing ground for intellectuals, who have posited novel interpretations of a radically new phenomenon based on pre-existing paradigms which have not always proven adequate. The round table – resulting from the collaboration between the University of Notre Dame Rome Global Gateway and the international PhD program “Contemporary Humanism” at LUMSA University – aims at drawing an early assessment of those intellectual attempts. In the awareness that the pandemic represents, in all respects, a challenge also for thought.

Time: Fri Sep 11, 2020, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Location: Webinar and In-Person Event – Notre Dame University Rome Global Gateway

PANELISTS:

Vittorio G. Hosle – University of Notre Dame

Ferdinando Menga – Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli

Francesco Valerio Tommasi – La Sapienza Università di Roma

MODERATOR:

Stefano Biancu – LUMSA Università di Roma – Doctoral Program in Contemporary Humanism

REGISTRATION REQUIRED

Le potenze dell’anima (Sebastian Schwibach)

Lo scorso febbraio, poco prima che scoppiasse la pandemia, usciva per l’editore Marsilio di Venezia la nuova edizione di Le potenze dell’anima. Vie alla riforma interiore. Dal disincanto al risveglio, saggio di Elémire Zolla pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1968.

La nuova edizione, curata dalla moglie e orientalista Grazia Marchianò nell’ambito dell’Opera omnia, consente al lettore di attingere ad un testo che, pur da molti anni fuori commercio, mantiene intatto il suo interesse per la contemporanea riflessione filosofico-religiosa. A prima vista non si direbbe certo un saggio di attualità, ma scorrendo le pagine ci si accorge che i problemi trattati dall’autore sono, proprio per il fatto di essere inattuali, di estremo interesse per il presente.

La prima parte si concentra sulla struttura della soggettività, analizzata da Zolla nelle sue parti costituenti, ovvero il corpo, la ragione, l’anima e lo spirito. Se l’essere umano medio si trova imprigionato tra le maglie della triangolazione corpo-ragione-anima, ovvero materialismo-razionalismo-sentimentalismo, è possibile individuare nello spirito o intelletto la possibilità di una liberazione dalle catene e di un’apertura ad una dimensione dell’umano extrasoggettiva ovvero impersonale. La seconda parte analizza tale possibilità passando in rassegna i modi in cui l’essere umano è stato suddiviso nelle varie culture. L’autore individua cioè le diverse modalità in cui nel corso della storia si è declinato il tentativo di riforma interiore, che trova il suo culmine nella vita intellettuale, ovvero in quella esperienza di trascendimento delle opposizioni binarie e di raggiungimento dell’Unità.

Chi era dunque Zolla e perché l’edizione dell’Opera omnia risulta di estremo interesse tanto nell’ambito accademico quanto per il lettore appassionato di filosofia e storia delle religioni?

Elémire Zolla (Torino 1926-Montepulciano 2002) è stato un intellettuale di spicco del secondo Novecento italiano. Oltre all’opera saggistica e all’impegno in iniziative culturali quali le attività presso l’Istituto Accademico di Roma o l’Istituto Ticinese di Alti Studi, si è dedicato a portare la cultura fuori dallo stretto circolo del mondo accademico attraverso la collaborazione con riviste e giornali quali ad esempio il “Corriere della Sera” o “Il Sole 24 ore”. L’interesse per la filosofia critica proposta dalla Scuola di Francoforte e l’esigenza di trovare una via di fuga dalla crisi della moderna società industriale lo hanno portato ad avventurarsi nello studio della mistica, con un movimento che da Occidente ha sempre più portato verso Oriente.

Ebbene, proprio l’intreccio tra critica della modernità e tentativo di trovare una via di uscita da tale impasse è uno dei punti di forza del pensiero zolliano, che al rigore metodologico affianca una inesausta passione per la verità. Mentre fioriscono gli studi contro il mondo della tecnica o a suo favore, mentre l’ambientalismo viene di volta in volta osteggiato o applaudito dalla società, mentre si cerca di individuare dispositivi economici atti a mitigare la dilagante crisi sociale, ambientale, finanziaria, Zolla dal recente passato indica una strada diversa, una via in interiore homine, una possibilità di riforma dell’interiorità prima ancora che della società. Solo a patto di non essere più automi e di seguire il motto delfico “conosci te stesso” fin nelle più desolate contrade della propria anima, solo a condizione di scendere nell’Ade della nostra interiorità per emergerne ricchi di esperienza e conoscenza, sarà possibile individuare i nodi che impediscono di vivere una vita degna di essere vissuta, una vita libera tanto dalle coazioni sociali quanto da quelle personali.

Questa è la strada che nella sua opera di poligrafo Zolla ci indica, una strada che continua ad arrivarci come un sussurro nel caos metropolitano.

Per ulteriori approfondimenti su Zolla clicca qui.

Sebastian Schwibach è dottorando in “Contemporary Humanism” (curriculum “Philosophy and Religion”).