Ahmed Barqawi
Since Europe became the center of the world and its intellect, it has thought of itself as the world. The heirs of human centrality became occupiers and colonizers, based on the belief that human centrality, for most Western philosophers, only meant European centrality. France, the nation of the French Revolution, with its slogan of fraternity, love, equality, and the Declaration of Human Rights, killed one million Algerians to maintain its status as a colonial state. The British Empire, which ruled half the world, cared little for the fate of its colonized peoples. White supremacy in South Africa saw only the white man as the center of humanity. Zionism, born in Europe, disregarded the existence of others living in their homeland. The American who returned Iraq to a pre-modern state still believes in the centrality of America as the central power of humanity.
For the first time, humanity awakens to a global threat that endangers human life everywhere on the planet. For the first time, a universal threat looms over humanity due to the global coronavirus pandemic, forcing human minds everywhere to contemplate the fate of mankind. In fact, the pandemic has awakened the conscience that had long slumbered in the bed of globalization.
The collective intellect, frightened by the threat of death, does not ponder the causes and outcomes of this danger, something only intellectual elites of various kinds contemplate. The elite asks the right questions, not just to explain this global phenomenon, but to change the world, which has bred these deadly viruses within its womb.
Let me pose the following questions, which I see as worthy of philosophical answers. These are questions that scientists, economists, and politicians might not necessarily ponder. This, in turn, leads us to some of their answers, which can be viewed through the lens of the overall threat to humanity.
1. How did the coronavirus emerge, and why?
The question of how the virus appeared, from a biological standpoint, is not a philosophical one. Only biologists and lab scientists specializing in virology can answer this. However, let’s examine the prevalent answers. These responses directly reveal their meaning.
The possible scientific answers to this question are:
A natural mutation of the SARS virus that jumped to humans via animals, thus nature alone is responsible for this virus and its dangers.
It is the result of intentional research that accidentally leaked from laboratories, making a scientific error the cause.
It was created in American, European, or Chinese labs with the intention of causing global economic disaster.
If we accept the explanation that it arose naturally, we turn directly to science. But the coronavirus crisis brings us back to an important ethical and value-related question: can we study nature scientifically without considering human beings and their fate? If the virus is a mutation, science must ask what natural conditions led to this mutation and how we can combat its threat. The question of combating it is directly tied to the potential threat of death for humans infected by the virus.
But what if the coronavirus is the result of a lab error? Producing a virus like this for malicious purposes, as part of biological warfare, signifies the degradation of ethical awareness in scientifically advanced, hegemonic states. It also indicates the subjugation of scientists to the policies of dominance. Producing this virus is no different from producing the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The question of science and ethics, philosophically speaking, has been raised for a long time. However, the destructive use of science remains dominant, and there is little new we can add to the ethical discourse surrounding science and human happiness.
If the virus was created with a Malthusian or economic agenda, though I do not lean toward this view, it reflects a fundamental mistrust of capitalism’s regard for human life. Even proposing such a view, weak as its evidence may be, indicates a protest against humanity’s exclusion and death in modern civilization. The death of humanity here does not only mean the loss of human will to shape the world or the loss of freedom but also the loss of human value and centrality, as I will elaborate later.
2. The Coronavirus as a Scandal:
The intellectual elite’s discourse, which warned of globalization’s danger to humanity and its position within a capitalism with no ethical boundaries, has exposed the evil resulting from human death. But the coronavirus has revealed, in an unprecedented manner, the state’s disregard for humanity, as seen in its prioritization of wealth. The brutal expansion of globalized capitalism represents the practical end of the Enlightenment, tolerance, civil society, political parties, and the comprehensive system of freedom and democracy.
Globalized states, which today are incapable of protecting human life from a deadly virus, as reflected in the realities of hospitals, confirm that human beings no longer hold value in the world of globalization.
Globalization has forced a reconsideration of all concepts related to freedom’s trajectory and the triumph of human centrality, calling for a thorough review.
Today, globalization defines itself as a specific form of capitalism that controls the world economically, politically, and culturally. It is a new imperialism, not a novel socio-economic formation, but post-nation-state imperialism where multinational capital reigns supreme, disregarding national borders and state sovereignty. Therefore, we don’t see the historical rupture that occurred with the transition from feudalism to capitalism; rather, capitalism persists through transformations within global capitalism.
Science, which once played a role in producing the means of production, has now become a loyal servant in the accumulation of wealth for individuals who control the market in the era of the techno-electronic revolution. Capital, once tied to industrial monopolies, now operates through independent banking power. Culture has also become a tool in the hands of global capital, distracting people with entertainment.
One of the main social changes brought about by globalization is the expansion of the marginal class. Members of the working class who lost their jobs and segments of the middle class have been driven into this marginalized category. This has political implications in the world that produced globalization.
Marginalized groups have always existed. Herbert Marcuse noted them in his time, as did Sartre in his commentary on human alienation under capitalism. Leftist movements relied on unions and communist or socialist parties to challenge traditional capitalist right-wing forces.
At this very moment, European consciousness declared the death of man, as if spirit, reason, and freedom are alienated.
