Men and women are seen behind barbed wire after the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland, in 1945. The Holocaust was largely a product of the unwillingness to challenge the ‘new normal’ of the Nazi regime Dr Gonzales argues. Photo: CNS We must be vigilant, discerning, and watchful over what kind of ‘new normal’ is appearing on the horizon of our post-Covid world, writes Dr Philip Gonzales
One of the fundamental tasks of philosophy is to seek to understand something of the riddle — or better — mystery of the human condition. In this never-ending task, philosophy always has something to say to the present moment. True philosophy, then, is not a mummified reminiscence but a vital and living act that speaks to our present condition. Indeed, one might be so bold as to say that it is necessary for navigating the tumultuous seas of the present. For when one understands something of the truth of the human condition one is then able to better judge current events according to this truth.
For what such a world would look like is far too nebulous for any to predict”
What can philosophy tell us amidst the Covid-19 crisis and the ever-buzzing clamour of the slogan — ‘the new normal’? I would hazard to say that philosophy’s knowledge of the human condition tells us that we are entering ethically ambiguous waters. However, I do not fully intend to pursue that here but rather reflect on how the human condition is itself ethically ambiguous. Once this is seen it becomes clear that we must be watchful and vigilant in relation to the chatter about the new normality of a post-coronavirus world. For what such a world would look like is far too nebulous for any to predict. And whether our post-Covid world will be better than the ‘old normal’ is far too uncertain to proclaim. This uncertainty calls for vigilance and informed discernment concerning the myriad of possibilities of what a post-Covid world should, or could, look like.
Humanity
“Manifold is the uncanny, yet nothing uncannier than man bestirs itself, rising up beyond him,” reads one possible translation of the first line of the choral ode from Sophocles’ Antigone. This ode, without a doubt, is one of the greatest reflections on the strange and uncanny nature of our humanity within the western tradition. Who indeed can unriddle or solve the mystery that we are to ourselves? Yet, perhaps, what is paradoxically most uncanny about humanity is how uncanny we actually are in our social and daily lives. What animal, besides the human animal, loves more the stability and certainty of its fixed habitat; the habitual nature of the human habitat that seeks to ever-secure itself against intrusions that could surprise or disturb its very rhythm of sameness within the quotidian tempo of our social and daily life. Perhaps what is strangest about our humanity is that it seeks to create a buffered space of normality over against what is strange, other, and exceptional. No being or animal loves or seeks out more the state of being normal than the human.
In our current situation this demand for normalcy is most radically expressed by the fact that we are seeking to define the exceptional crisis of Covid-19 as the “new normal”. Our desire for the normal is so great that we cannot even call something which is an exception — an exception — and in not naming it such we cannot fully understand it as an event which disrupts our general manner of life. The exceptional becomes the ‘new normal’, and in being the ‘new normal’ it ceases to be exceptional. This should give us pause for worry socially and politically, on more than one front.
Humanity’s ability to adapt to all circumstances — good or evil — is thus ambiguous and uncertain”
Looking at this philosophically it must be asked: what does this reveal about the human condition? It reveals that what is so strange and uncanny about the human condition is that the normal is relative and that our humanity can treat something exceptional as if it is normal. There is ambiguity and a play of light and darkness in this aspect of the human condition. Who has not seen one of those photographs of a child playing amidst the rabble of a war-ravaged country; playing in the shadows of machines of death and destruction? Children continue to play, despite how exceptional the circumstances are, and this is ever a sign of hope in humanity, in a world given over increasingly to violence and control. Or think of Roberto Bennigni’s acclaimed and haunting film, Life is Beautiful (1997). This film calls to mind our reason to hope as well as the inverse image of our ethical ambiguity to adapt to all conditions, despite how exceptional. This aspect is masterfully seen in Hannah Arendt’s indispensable book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). The banality of Eichmann’s evil was largely his unwillingness and inability to question the ‘new normal’ of the Nazi regime and its ‘final solution’. This exceptional evil became fused with his normal life and daily routine. And this is ever reason for despair in humanity, in a world given over increasingly to violence and control.
Dual aspect
Humanity’s ability to adapt to all circumstances — good or evil — is thus ambiguous and uncertain. It reveals hope and a transcendence towards the light, but it also reveals our ability to go down and transcend invertedly into the very depths of darkness. This dual aspect of the human condition shows that the ‘new normal’ of a post-coronavirus world harbours both these possibilities. If anyone thinks this hyperbole or ashen doom-speak, all one needs to do is look at the last century to exorcise such trite objections. The 21st Century is not immune to those horrors and, in many ways, it may even be ripe with its increasing transhumanistic bent and its fable of counterfeit transcendence. But, as Christians, we are called to live in hope, and work for, a better future and a fairer more equitable world, beyond our late-capitalistic malaise and morass. Yet, Christian hope is never naïve or optimistic. It is vigilant, discerning, and watchful over what kind of ‘new normal’ is appearing on the horizon of our post-Covid world. Christians must, as Pope Francis says ‘dream,’ but we must also know that dreams too quickly become nightmares.
Dr Philip John Paul Gonzales is a lecturer in philosophy at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. This article is part of a new regular column where philosophers from Maynooth Drs Gaven Kerr and Philip Gonzales offer accessible introductory thoughts on perennial themes in the history of philosophy and the Catholic tradition.