Елизавета Захарова
Стажер-исследователь,
научно-учебная лаборатория политической географии
и современной геополитики,
Национальный исследовательский университет
«Высшая школа экономики»
Адрес: ул. Мясницкая, д. 20,
г. Москва, Российская Федерация 101000
E-mail: eszakharova@hse.ru

 

Рецензия на:
Fay Niker, Aveek Bhattacharya (eds.). Political Philosophy in a Pandemic: Routes to a More Just Future
(London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).

 

The COVID-19 pandemic arose quickly, brought about devastating consequences for the whole planet, and posed the task to re-evaluate our beliefs and everyday habits. Being more than a mere health scare and more than a mere social malady, it exposed us to the need of revisiting our fundamental understanding of our way of life. The whole world sunk into a mysterious atmosphere of the unknown, thus raising new and uncommon questions that no one could answer. No one knew how to react, what to think of the disease and its consequences, how to provide observations, or how to draw conclusions. In this light, political philosophy is often chastised for addressing “perennial” problems while avoiding an analysis of contemporary issues; the book Political Philosophy in a Pandemic: Routes to a More Just Future tries to refute this belief by offering a mode of thinking as well as speaking of COVID-19 from a relevant standpoint. Aveek Bhattacharya and Fay Niker have published a collection of essays on social welfare and vulnerability, economic justice, democratic relations, speech and (mis)information, crisis, and justice, topics quite common for political philosophy in 2021. The series of reflections starts with the publications on justice-everywhere.org, a blog about philosophy in public affairs which the editors help run (1). They are confident that the issues posed in the book and the results obtained are both unpredictable and predictable. On the one hand, some of them are easy to predict since the crisis has severely sharpened the problems of injustice, i.e. the poor condition of public health systems, educational and intergenerational inequalities, housing disadvantages, etc., all of which existed well before the pandemic.