Responses to a Pandemic : Philosophical and Political Reflections

What does it mean to be in the middle of a pandemic—for me, for my country, for the world? How do our current inequalities and injustices become amplified by the demands of the pandemic and what, if anything, can be done? Who is most impacted—and why does it seem that so many of the same people are, once again, deemed expendable and less-than? How do we explain COVID-19 and its attendant traumas to our children, and what do we teach them about hope, justice, grief, and the role of imagination in survival? And once the worst has passed, how do we start again, and what should we care about as we contemplate individual and collective repair?

In this collection of public and political philosophy, both well-established and up-and-coming philosophers come together to address these and other questions born of a devastating pandemic to which they are neither objective spectators nor observers, insulated by the passage of time. Indeed, the contributors to this volume are both grounded in, and immediately affected by, their own lived realities as source material for the questions that move and motivate them.