Прощай, COVID?

Коллектив авторов, 2020

Отсутствие навыка мышления пандемии как эпохи ощущается повсеместно. Речи политиков «не попадают» в реальность подданных, обращения медицинских властей противоречат повседневному опыту, требования и запреты конфликтуют с новым здравым смыслом. Разрывы ведут к новым кризисам. Чумные бунты – не случайность, не эксцесс, а следы такого рода разрывов в нашем прошлом. А значит, интеллектуалам нужно тратить силы и время, чтобы обжить, доместифицировать эпоху COVID, в которой мы оказались заперты. Коллективная монография «Прощай, COVID?» призвана заполнить этот пробел, а также произвести в некотором смысле инвентаризацию самой способности русского философского языка к обживанию ситуации эпохи пандемии. В сборник вошли тексты философов, социологов и политологов из ведущих интеллектуальных центров страны. В формате PDF A4 сохранен издательский макет книги.

Introduction On the Productivity of Itching

It’s hard to say who wins in the three thousand years game “philosophy VS epidemics”. Epimenides, according to Diogenes, saved Athens from pestilence. Marcus Aurelius in the midst of the Antonine plague wrote “Treatise to Himself”, perhaps one of the main works of the late Stoicism. Thomas Hobbes survived two or even three epidemics, but, was accused of blasphemy, which, according to Parliament, caused the plague and the Great Fire of London in 1666. Because of it he fell victim to the royal ban on philosophizing, and until the end of his life was engaged only in mathematics and translations. Immanuel Kant escaped at least three flu epidemics, practicing celibacy and strict daily routines. Hegel died of cholera. Kierkegaard — from tuberculosis, possibly exacerbated by the flu. Max Weber, possibly from a Spanish flu.

In case of COVID-19 pandemic we can say that philosophy probably wins this one, albeit not with a crushing score. Shakira, sitting on self-isolation, studied Plato and graduated from a four-week course of classical Greek philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. Slavoj Zizek on self-isolation wrote so many op-eds on the pandemic that it was enough to manage the book.

For humanitarian knowledge, this pandemic means the same as the 1991 Gulf War meant for the media. That was the first live war that had been televising and happening at once. This is the first pandemic, reflected by philosophers and social theorists live, here and now, in an innumerable accessible form. Columns, articles, op-eds, blog posts — if there is feast during the plague, during this we managed to look at the feast of the spirit.

However, the founders of Moscow Philosophical Circle weren’t able to calmly enjoy the accessibility of the fruits of enlightenment and the steady flow of first-class humanitarian texts. Pillars of the English-, French-, German-, Italian-, Hispanic-language humanitarian scenes, did not tear themselves away from desks to produce texts on coronavirus. The Russian language as a tool of thought, having fallen into quarantine, flourished anywhere: in the heated debates of faculties at Zoom, in dialogs on YouTube and fleeting skirmishes on Facebook. But didn’t want to lie down on paper. Iconic figures of modern philosophy seemed to us as if asking: what did you write during the quarantine, besides fifty Facebook comments and three posts? Perhaps it was a conscience. Rather, it was the very itch that Socrates describes in Plato’s “Philebus”.

The book you are holding is the product of this itch. It is unique for several reasons.

First, it gives a panoramic picture of the phenomenon that mankind encountered in the first half of 2020. In terms of the coverage of the plots given to us by the pandemic for observation and evaluation. In terms of the scatter of points of view. And in terms of the focus and sharpness of the advanced estimates and proposed arguments.

Second, it is a multi-party book. If we can call SARS-CoV-2 a thing, then this is its full-fledged democratic parliament. The Russian intellectual space has long been marked by demarcation lines protecting the integrity and hermeticity of intellectual camps. “Goodbye COVID?” behaves as if these lines do not exist. Left, right, liberal, communist, statist, and anarchist points of view and argumentation systems are presented here on an equal footing. And no, neither the world nor this book collapsed from an unexpected or even provocative neighborhood. On the contrary, they became more voluminous and enlightened.

Thirdly, as it seems to us, this book is a good example of how should work a conscious attitude toward those forms of inequality that have no place in science and academia. We are talking about gender, ranks, and merits, about the age and differences in academic statuses. Absolute equality is still only a mathematical function, but we tried to get to it as close as was possible.

The collection consists of four sections. Choosing names for them we could not resist the temptation to play a game with the nomen of the virus that hit the world — SARS. To emphasize the inconceivable expressiveness of COVID-19, we used words of Esperanto, not live, not dead, not purely artificial, but not a natural language, the justification for the existence of which could confuse anyone, as well as the justification for the existence of a virus that is too perfect, to be a pure offspring of nature.

The Scio (Knowledge) section contains texts examining the problem of collision with COVID-19 through the prism of epistemology and speculative philosophy. Aŭtonomeco (Autonomy) section presents this clash in the optics of personal ontological, existential and ethical experience. Reagoj (Reactions) — combines texts that interpret in one way or another the reactive nature of this collision, which mixes and redefines the set of maps, ideas, and situations in which we’ve been caught before the pandemic. Societo (Society) section collects texts devoted to social structures (in a broad sense of the word) that have been manifested, actualized, affected, or destroyed by a pandemic.

The usual words of gratitude to the authors and those who helped the birth of this book are not enough. Our idea to gather the “pandemic” series of texts together under one cover received approval and support from everyone we contacted from the very first attempt. The authors — philosophers, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists — agreed on very short notice to participate. Foreign colleagues helped with all the difficulties that arise. Expert Institution of Social Researches, Moscow-based think tank, despite the obvious adventurousness of the idea (a book? a philosophical book? in two months? it can’t happen!), provided the necessary funding. Colleagues from the editorial office of the Logos journal and the Gaidar Institute Press, without asking any questions, gave us a comradely shoulder in advance and immediately agreed to be publishers. From the moment of the birth of this crazy idea to the appearance of the book layout, less than a month and a half passed, so it was truly a miracle, by any standards.

“The world will never be the same” — this seems to be the main post-COVID mantra. We do not quite agree with this. There is another world, and it exists regardless of epidemics and crises. This other world is called respublica literaria, and you are now holding the artifact from it.

Moscow Philosophical Circle,

June 2020