Pandemic and lifestyle

Abstract

The article summarizes the three crises that the current society is suffering: the fight against climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and the way of life that it leads. It focuses, in particular, on the ethical, political and legal consequences as well as on the contradictions that may be glimpsed and that call into question the way of life of society. Based on the observation that both the health crisis caused by COVID-19 and climate change share three fundamental characteristics: first, they are to a different extent «integral accidents», in the basic sense given to the concept by its creator, Paul Virilio; second, technoscience plays a basic role; and finally, they immersed us in a Gramscian crisis. Following these three points, we will present the contradictions that the pandemic has generated in our societies. Finally, it will be seen how the solutions to these crises presuppose a clash with the dominant conception so far of the ethical concept of autonomy and that of human rights, especially with regard to individual rights. To conclude the article, some proposals will be made from ethics and bioethics, as it will be necessary to define a new ethical proposal that is able to articulate at the same time what a priori seems completely irreconcilable: individual autonomy and the common good. The example of the pandemic, which we are still living in today, will serve as a central axis for us to reflect on these crucial issues.