An Existential Analysis of Responses to the 2020 Coronavirus Outbreak

Abstract

This essay examines people’s responses to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic from the perspective of existential psychology. The existential anxieties associated with the pandemic, as well as people’s responses to them, can be understood and articulated through Sartre’s concept of bad faith. Using this existential lens, we examine the ways in which people’s responses to the virus interact with long-standing societal patterns of interconnection as well as inequity, and how these processes are rooted within the cultural context of late modernity. This analysis reveals that our interconnection simultaneously constitutes the most profound challenges in our psychological response to the pandemic, as well as our greatest source of hope.