Man is responsibility. Ethical sensitivity versus responsibility in the context of Covid-19 pandemic.

Abstract

The article addresses the problem of existential and social necessity of ethical sensitivity and responsibility in the case of a global tragedy such as Covid-19 pandemic. The author aims at answering the question of what has been learned about morality during the pandemic. She wonders whether it has awoken the awareness that we constitute one common world community, in which distress of one threatens the rest, and we will all either survive or die, or has it intensified the tendency for eliminating moral sensitivity, responsibility, and concern. With reference to the abovementioned issues, the author analyses the novel “The Plague” by Albert Camus, comparing it with the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, especially with his conception of responsibility and ethical sensitivity. Further, she confronts those ideas with the thoughts of the critics of the negative aspects of globalization: Jean Baudrillard and Zygmunt Bauman. The author compiles them with the contemporary diagnosis of Pope Francis - realizing that his critical thinking (in many aspects consistent with the research of economists such as Joseph Striglitz or Thomas Piketty) deserves deeper philosophical reflection in the context of the philosophy of sensitivity and responsibility by Levinas.

Consequently, the author argues in favor of the self-developed philosophy of sensitivity in the spirit of Levinas, against the philosophy of ethical, social, and epistemological listlessness. It is concluded that such situations as the pandemic force us to exceed the self-interest of being in direction of the selflessness of ethics.