The Virus of the Question. The Phenomenology of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is a presentation of ordinary experience of the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus. By illuminating fundamental moments of the said experience, this analysis attempts to uncover its deeper dynamics, here described by dint of the notion of questionableness, which—as it transpires—stands in some conflict with what can be observed at the level of ordinary ways of its articulations (shaped and spread by public opinion, which very much desires an answer). The experience of the pandemic uncovers the existence of a certain conflict between its more superficial layer, characterizing a social-political dimension of human existence, and its deeper layer, which unfolds at the level of individual life. This conflict constitutes a manifestation of a few-century-long and evermore aggravated divergence of two sorts of experiences: the objectifying scientific-technical and the existential one.

Keywords

• pandemic
• covid-19
• sars-cov-2
• experience
• questionableness