Freedom and Independence During the Pandemic

Abstract

The scale and the speed of the spread of the new coronavirus strain and economic crises associated with it are becoming the reason to rethink the essential features and ways of interaction between freedom and independence. The aim of the research is to consider new and evaluate the significance of traditional approaches to defining independence and freedom. The authors analyze the mechanisms of the formation and development of biopower, the effectiveness of which is manifested in the possibility of turning people into "obedient bodies" (M. Foucault) and reducing human existence to the state of "bare life" (J. Agamben).The researchers emphasize that the highest form biopower manifestation, arose due to the effective development of medicine, became the possibility of transforming life and death into political concepts that require a "special solution". Therefore, the restrictive measures that arose during the spread of COVID-19 cannot be considered as a manifestation of total forms of addiction are established by biopolitics. The research allows the authors to come to the conclusion that the impossibility of achieving freedom and the loss of independence arise in the process of consistent implementation of the individualistic ideals. The results of the study contain a few contradictions identified by the authors. First of all, the development of biopower points that the concern for people's health enables the State to penetrate and manage all spheres of an individual's existence including issues of life and death. Biopolitics does not contribute to the establishment and development of civil rights, but creates effective means for reducing people to a state of "bare life". In the spread of COVID-19 the contradiction of following the individualistic ideals became obvious. Risks and threats that have a global character are confronted by a person unwilling to take responsibility. The revealed contradictions lead to the conclusion that a condition to maintain independence and achieve freedom in the modern world can be the formation of the new types of solidarities that make it possible to overcome the autonomy of existence and develop a responsible attitude to what is happening in the world.