Abstract
The multifaceted nature of COVID-19 permeates all dimensions of human life. In this article, we argue that the COVID-19 crisis might teach us something about dealing with ruptures of this kind and scope in the future. The pandemic challenges our Being-in-the-world and it has the potential to help us realise the authentic possibilities of our own being – a freedom we have in our being-towards-death. We contemplate the extent to which this pandemic has caused existential angst and resultant reflection. To this end, we analyse, with reference to the work of Martin Heidegger, the existential and technological challenges that accompany the pandemic. We postulate that the pandemic has forced us to think about our existence more authentically, away from the “fallenness” of the ontological structure of Dasein in its everydayness. It proffers the opportunity to reconsider what authentic existence, technology, and embodiment entail amidst COVID-19 and for the future.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic is a multifaceted crisis that permeates all dimensions of human life and challenges the very nature of our existence
What can we learn about Being-in-the-COVID-19-world?
Technology encompasses our being and reveals that, in trying to escape from our being through digital technology, we might be escaping from the fullness of being itself – clearly an impossibility but constraining of our existence
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic is a multifaceted crisis that permeates all dimensions of human life and challenges the very nature of our existence (or, in Heideggerian terms, our being-in-the-world). We focus on the existential challenges and angst that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused (especially in relation to our expanded use of digital technologies), while being ever so aware of the challenges (psychologically, economically, and so on) that are profoundly interrelated and persistently increased during this period. We will consider two major works of Heidegger in our analysis of COVID-19, namely Being and time – originally published in 1926 – and The question concerning technology (1977). These will be brought into conversation with the authors’ own experiences of the lockdown in South Africa
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