Reflections on the Epidemic as an Anthropological Challenge (Excerpts)
Anti-Lockdown protestors in Naples, Italy — PHOTO CREDIT, EPA
We offer to our readers the following excerpts which we translated from a longer essay — really a small book — by the Italian-born Stefano Zamagni, a doctoral candidate in theology at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at Catholic University in America. The author considers that larger text still a work in progress, but he has kindly permitted us to publish these meditations on the anthropological suppositions behind a technocratic as contrasted with a Christian approach to dealing with what we might call this ‘post-modern’ disease. — the Editors
The fundamental thesis of these pages starts from the basic assumption that there is nothing in the world that is neutral from a theological and anthropological point of view. The reason for this is rooted in the revelation that man is a created being, created in the image of God. Man defines himself as a subject in history from within this original relationship.
Our current circumstance is no exception in this regard, and yet our present situation nonetheless represents something novel in history: covid-19 is the first epidemic that post-modern society has faced. Therefore, we are offered a propitious opportunity to consider what conception of man, what concept of his relationship with his fellow man and with God, has guided Western society in the last fifty years, from the time of the student protests until today. What anthropology is presupposed by the reaction of the political world and cultural elites to the first epidemic of the technological age? This is the first question we must address.
The covid-19 epidemic was, to be sure, an unforeseen and unpredictable event. Let it be granted that the epidemic itself was not “constructed.” What was indeed "constructed", however, is the situation of world crisis -- the so-called "pandemic". The feeling of living in a "health emergency" is the result of how the event itself has been conceived, presented and subsequently experienced in the Western world. Hence, we have to ask ourselves a second question: what role did medicine, science and politics play not in causing the epidemic but in representing it as a health emergency and specifically as a pandemic?
Since a tree is recognized by its fruits, to understand the meaning of the reaction to the epidemic, and therefore to understand the nature of the technocratic mentality that guides society, it is necessary to look first of all at the restrictive measures that have been taken. Their consequences go far beyond the economic and social crisis they have incurred. Measures having to do with the reopening (or reclosing) of churches, schools and businesses cannot be fully understood if we restrict ourselves only to arguments of a purely sociological or psychological nature. What emerges from the ruins of the traditional conception of society, a concept centered on the person and the family, is the totalitarianism of bourgeois society and of its liberal and progressive culture. Which leads us to a third question which needs to be taken into consideration: which phenomena introduced or highlighted by the current restrictive measures are destined to change the life of the individual, and therefore the life of society as a whole, and will go on influencing it even after these restrictive measures themselves are removed?
The victory of scientism
One might think that the epidemic marked a defeat for science, which had to retreat and recognize its own powerlessness. This would be a naive and superficial reading of the current cultural climate, to the extent that it identifies science and technology only with what happens in the laboratory or in hospitals.
In truth, the mobilization of science and biotechnology in the face of the epidemic has only brought to light the true face of post-Christian Western culture. In fact, the decision to impose a general lockdown is not an indication of the defeat of science, but entirely to the contrary. It shines a light on the presupposition that science is considered the only way out. When science was (temporarily) in difficulty, there simply could be no other possibility but to temporarily stop all of public life and wait for scientific and technological development to take its course, offering the necessary conditions for a return to life. The lockdown, which was then followed by the vaccine, mark, then, the victory of a scientific anthropology according to which man's life is determined by his ability to adapt to ever new conditions through ever-new inventions.
The lockdown, which was then followed by the vaccine, mark, then, the victory of a scientific anthropology according to which man's life is determined by his ability to adapt to ever new conditions through ever-new inventions.
A distinctive feature of pragmatic scientism is its practical rejection -- followed later by the intellectual denial -- of ancient and medieval metaphysics. In fact, the latter is accused of describing the world in a static way, as it is populated by beings whose essence appears fixed and unchangeable. In the eyes of modern man, however, nothing is established once and for all and indeed the negation of what is presently given is actively sought. ‘What is’ is continuously being built and rebuilt, on an ad hoc basis. The denial of tradition, in particular, becomes the engine of change.
From this point of view, the time of epidemic presents itself as a propitious time for the development and progress for science, and, indeed, it is also such for all the other aspects of bourgeois society. The world of tomorrow is seen as always better than the present one. The modern mentality is characterized by the search for novelty as a value in itself, so much so that present and past lose meaning except in so far as they serve as material for progress toward that perfect society that is always in the process of coming into being. Homo progressivus will either deny, or otherwise exploit for his own ends, anything that does not adapt to the unstoppable flow of history.
This evolutionary-progressive mentality has now established itself as all-encompassing. Indeed, it is only with great difficulty that this mentality can even be named, much less questioned. Scientism and technocracy constitute the water in which we swim, so much so that the possibility of framing human existence in any other way hardly comes to mind. Proof of this can be found in the fact that it is hardly imaginable to devise other ways than lockdowns and mass vaccinations to deal with the circumstance of an epidemic. It is a lack of imagination, which has its root in a reduction of reason whose horizon is limited to the scientifically demonstrable. But what we are witnessing is also a distortion of morality. Now the latter simply ends up justifying the status quo in the name of progress as the absolute value.
That the lockdown marked the victory of science and not its defeat appears likewise from the circumstance that, faced with the drama of suffering and death, society's only responses came in the form of the systematic hospitalization of infected people and various scientific research programs. Every effort was aimed at ensuring that hospitals and testing laboratories could fight against the virus. The initial declaration of impotence, therefore, must be interpreted as a simple mask for scientific hubris, according to which science is the only bulwark in the face of disease and death, within a culture where the latter are conceived, in the spirit of pragmatism, as ‘problems’ to be ‘solved.’
All other instances that make up the existence of man were considered irrelevant for the purpose of eliminating the virus. What if this virus, like so many others, could not be eliminated, but only defeated by learning to live with it? These questions have no place and indeed do not even arise …
Since it is only through medical science that diseases can be addressed, politics, therefore, is only doing its duty when it recognizes the primacy of science and puts into practice what science says. The salvation of people, therefore, can only come in the form of hospitals and vaccines. This, in summary, is the message which scientists, politicians and opinion leaders of all kinds have communicated, and the means by which they have convinced entire populations to passively obey whatever was ordered to them by the technocrats in power: to obey first the lockdown and then the mandatory vaccination campaign now.
In this regard, it is of fundamental importance to ask ourselves what is meant by the terms "salvation" and "person" to which the technocrats themselves often refer. In Greek, the term "save" literally means "to make everything; to make whole". Saving the person presupposes that we look at them in their entirety, that is, according to that "total" good that unifies all particular psycho-physiological goods. This total good coincides with the good of the spirit, which gives unity to soul and body according to the tri-partite anthropology of Aristotelian-Thomistic derivation. The enjoyment of God as the highest good is exclusive to the person in whom the unity of form and matter occurs through the spirit. The good of the person then is ultimately a spiritual good, in the light of the relationship that soul and body establish with God. The latter is the salvation that gives unity to man. God is the total good that modern anthropology denies by means of the reduction of man to a mechanism and the fragmentation of his unity into parts (the Cartesian res cogitans and res extensa) like the gears of a machine. By separating the particular from its intrinsic relationship with the whole, human life becomes mere biological existence. Earthly life itself is no longer defined by reference to the eternity to which it intrinsically relates and which represents life’s final cause.
As already mentioned, the present epidemic has done nothing but show the pervasiveness of this fragmentary anthropology in different sectors of society. In fact, this same reduction of man to machine has been reproduced both at the medical hygiene science level and at the socio-economic level. Many have criticized the choices of politicians who have followed the requests of the health authorities without considering the consequences on the economy. The reopening of offices, factories, restaurants and cinemas was then requested in order to preserve the business. For modern man, the decision presents itself as a choice between saving his life or saving his wallet. If we remain at the superficial level of sociology, the alternative appears an insoluble enigma. Balances and compromises, in fact, are not enough to save either pole of this tension. In fact, this alternative is a false one insofar as it presupposes a separation and a basic dualism between goods that actually belong to one another, if we look at man in the more comprehensive light of the common good and of God.
For only the person as a whole can be "saved" in the full sense of the term. It is useless to "save life" (physical life) without at the same time providing for our (spiritual) salvation. True salvation is that which pursues the good of the person as a whole. The good and the truth of the person, therefore, are never in a relation of antithesis (antagonism). If you look first of all at the person as "whole", the person’s particular goods do not appear in mutual contradiction but rather are saved in their particularity to the extent that they are adequately integrated with one another. The whole precedes and saves the parts. For man who is a creature, this whole is ultimately God to whom he opens himself through the whole that is the community of men. God alone is the supreme good of man; and by analogy is as all-encompassing as that common good towards which politics rightfully tends and to which it opens while seeking a unity that takes into consideration the various social, economic and health aspects of the human good. The reference to a genuine theological anthropology, then, is not merely one ‘option’ among many, but is, to the contrary, a necessity so that the various disciplines can truly work for the salvation of man within the polis. An ultimate reference to God is in fact necessary for politics and medicine to be politics and medicine: in other words, to be acts of charity towards the person. From this perspective, the gift of health cannot be separated from the gift of God.
The ‘essential’ in a totalitarian state
‘Labor is something essential: shame’ — PHOTO CREDIT, Getty Images
It is on this knife edge between two opposing anthropologies that the work of man in modern society arises. Doctors and nurses testified to this, as did various categories of workers considered "essential". But what about teachers and all those many other workers and professionals suddenly considered "non-essential”? Every work is an "essential" work to the extent that it allows the creature to express something of his or her own "essence", that is to say, to give of oneself while serving to accomplish the plan of good that God intends for creation. If a field of work is not essential it simply means that it does not allow for this expression of man as a collaborator of the Creator. “Non-essential” work is therefore inhuman work. What is more, the bourgeois mentality in which we live reduces the concept of "essentiality" to that of "usefulness", thus making inhuman even those professions considered "essential".
Epidemic-event, or pandemic-phenomenon?
To understand the circumstance that the Western world is going through, it is necessary to make a fundamental distinction between the epidemic as an event, and the reaction to the event itself, othe so-called "state of emergency". How would humanity have experienced the epidemic event if newspapers, television and social media had not started talking about the spread of the virus 24/7? The medium is not neutral. It constitutes the message itself. And what about the role of the World Health Organization: as others have already pointed out, how much of our perception of the event was determined by this event’s definition as a "pandemic"? The term itself assumes that "the entire population" (pan + demos) of the world has become ill [sick]. But this is simply not true. Many have contracted the virus, but most of them have not developed any serious lung disease. The concept of "pandemic" is a bio-political concept created by international institutions that view man and society as a whole as an object of statistical study in order to improve the general well-being.
The term "epidemic" also contains the idea of population and leads us to forget that the only object of human knowledge is (and can only be) the person. The mathematical approach is unable to know the essence, or the profound nature of the event and therefore to frame it according to its authentic meaning. The advantage of the statistical method is that it offers a scale of measurement and an external, Archimedian reference point which allows for the control of human behavior. The human, in fact, is reduced to a dot on a graph between two Cartesian axes. The essential becomes to predict and direct behavior. Within the narrative of the pandemic, medical and sociological discourse falls prey to an abstraction that obscures the reality to which it refers. The statistical categories of the pandemic, aside from being untrue – after all, the vast majority of the population suffers no malady -- obscures from view the only scale at which man can truly be known and cared for – the scale of the human person.
Shortly after the quarantine began, a letter from a woman from Milan appeared in the pages of a Catholic monthly. The woman, who was both a doctor and a mother, had worked for four years in Uganda prior to returning to Italy. She made a very simple observation: every year, Africa is hit by "crises" far worse than the coronavirus. Malaria, for example, causes three times the deaths, not to mention civil wars. Still, the Western world doesn't seem to care. Indeed, it is totally unaware of it. No one advertises the event to raise public awareness about prevention and scientific research to find a cure or a vaccine. In our civilization, in fact, only what the media present as such is relevant. In a secularized world, where reality has no metaphysical depth, only what is arbitrarily made known is truly "public". The sphere of what is ‘public’ becomes synonymous with what has been "published" or "advertised".
It is worth emphasizing that we must not fall into the opposite extreme, namely the total rejection of any restrictions and limitations. The question is rather that the person is called to judge reality with intelligence and prudence; that is, by means of keeping his gaze fixed on the whole and ultimately on the good that at the same time informs and transcends the particular circumstance. Certain measures, on the other hand, are technocratic precisely in that they consider the whole in the light of the part. Take the example of the lockdown, the goal of which is ultimately the preservation of life. There is no denying that the latter is good, but it certainly cannot be identified with the whole for which man is made and which he desires. Life is ‘preserved’ the more that life extends beyond itself towards a higher good that accomplishes it. Life means opening up from the inside toward what is infinitely high and infinitely deep. The intrinsic logic of technological tools rejects any such hierarchy of goods. Technocracy transforms the basic though relative need of survival into the supreme good. Technocratic society, then, has no way of integrating into restrictions which may be even necessary the other basic needs of man, especially the higher ones such as living with others and praising God, to which simple survival is naturally ordered.
Bourgeois anthropology shows its atheistic face to the extent that it reduces the spiritual aspects of human existence by considering them as nothing more than subjectivistic (non-necessary) options or ‘choices.’ An authentically Christian anthropology also recognizes the importance of survival as indeed a fundamental need, but places that survival in the context of a metaphysical understanding of who we are as created being. Modern ontological dualism refers to the conservation of life as a fundamental need but then reduces man to little more than an animal fighting for its own survival.
The enemy to be destroyed: the virus, or man?
The consequence of all this is the self-destruction of man and society themselves. In the context of the "war on the virus", which is a corrolary of the aforementioned war on suffering and death, everything become permissible. As with any other self-respecting war, there is no concern for the costs (human and otherwise) or the sacrifices required to destroy the enemy. To use an analogy, the lockdown is equivalent to dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. Despite the obvious differences, the logic is the same. In the case of that enemy which is death, however, the enemy cannot be defeated -- at any rate not by the means offered by science, which operate exclusively at the level of horizontal causality. Death, like all of life, has instead to do with man's capacity for self-transcendence, by bringing us face to face with the Absolute. Here indeed lies the true power of man as homo religiosus. But it is precisely the religious sense that the atheist and nihilistic mentality seeks to neutralize.
A scientific culture that starts from the denial of the religious nature of human life, including death, is moved by a sense of powerlessness toward that which it cannot control. Blind to the truth of man, science and politics act in an "imprudent" way, that is, they end up transforming the individual person from an object to be saved into an enemy to be destroyed. Whether the battle is fought against the virus or the battle is fought against death, in either case the victory coincides with the elimination of the person who carries this virus or this death. The current mentality has transformed every person into a “carrier” of contagion, regardless of whether that person is a healthy carrier or a sick carrier. But how do you destroy an enemy that is not seen and appears out of control? Simply by acting on what makes us visible through our corporeality: our bodily existence as persons. The State exercises its control by manipulating the person, whose unavoidable openness to others and unavoidable desire to live forever makes of each of us an ally of the virus and of death. Therefore, as the virus is faced by taking it to the laboratory to subject it to the experimental method, the same must happen with suffering and death in that ‘laboratory’ which is the human body and the political body. The person, who is now viewed universally as a (potential) carrier of death, is thus subjected to a social experiment on a scale never seen before in the entire history of humanity.
Vaccine as ‘Act of Charity’
Restrictive measures such as a quarantine imposed on all must be judged for what they are: technocracy’s negation of what we are objectively called to be, creatures made to love the other and ultimately to love God. This is how fear begins to determine relationships, lifestyles, and our whole way of viewing human existence. It is the apotheosis of a post-Christian culture that not only refuses to embrace the leper, but that even refuses to embrace those who are perfectly healthy. Indeed, Christian charity comes to be prohibited by law when the authorities forbid our taking care of the other who is sick, or potentially so. It will take a new Saint Damian who, as a leper, lived among lepers while taking care of them in body as well as in spirit. He looked at the sick as a "true doctor", that is, he viewed them in their true integrity, as people made for the health of the body and for the salvation of the soul. He could not give them any medicine for leprosy, yet he did not abandon them to their suffering. He concretely took care of their physical needs and gave them the only true antidote to suffering: an ultimate meaning, which is God. Today, as then, the Church and humanity need saints who, while not retreating in their judgment on the technocratic culture in which they live, testify with their life that Christian charity is truer than the logic of the world.
Whoever does not give God gives too little and this is, in fact, the criterion for distinguishing between charity and mere philanthropy. Charity is a Christian expression of authentic love to the extent that it welcomes others for what they are, by affirming the intrinsic truth and goodness of each person’s existence. In fact, it is only from within a love that affirms the other in his integrity, and therefore from within the relationship with God, that man will be able to regain his true health by knowing himself in his identity as a creature. It is no coincidence that, when the essential reference to a creator God disappeared, that the category of the "perfectly healthy" has also disappeared. Only the one who can provide proof of not being sick is healthy, so that the state of being "healthy" is reduced to "not sick".
It is no coincidence that, when the essential reference to a creator God disappeared, that the category of the "perfectly healthy" has also disappeared. Only the one who can provide proof of not being sick is healthy …
In light of this definition of charity as Christian love, it is interesting to consider whether it is appropriate to define vaccination against covid-19 as an "act of charity." It is with this expression that some American bishops have encouraged the faithful to undergo vaccination. The logic behind this statement sees personal immunization as a way of preserving not only oneself but also others from the disease. From this point of view, in fact, taking the vaccine appears as a cause of possible benefit for the other and the whole community. This vaccine justification appears to be fallacious. First, mass vaccination was initiated with no certainty that it actually prevents person-to-person transmission of the virus. In fact, recent studies show that the vaccine does not stop the infection but only reduces the viral load and therefore relieves the symptoms of the disease.
Furthermore, we must ask ourselves what actually constitutes an "act of charity". In this regard, it is indicative that the production of the vaccine does not appear flawless from a bioethical point of view. However, in response to those who point out that aborted fetal cells were used in the production or testing of the vaccine, it is argued precisely that in a moment of particular need, vaccination is an act of Christian love and therefore morally good. On the other hand, many are wondering about the real existence of a health emergency capable of justifying the need for mass use of the vaccine. With a cure rate close to 99%, covid-19 disease is far less lethal than smallpox, for example. Although the epidemic is real and neither the existence of the virus nor its consequences is questioned, the contours of the so-called "health emergency" are far from clear. It requires at least a serious examination and careful consideration that is not framed by media rhetoric.