Abstract

Covid-19 is, above all, a problem concerning public health and healthcare professionals. This seems totally obvious but not for everybody. However, just beginning the outbreak of the pandemic, in the midst of its deadliest first wave, some renowned intellectuals, such as Slavoj Žižek, speculated in highly idealized and utopian terms about the positive effects that would be unleashed for philosophical and political thought. In this article we try to think the biopolitical implications of this pandemic, especially through a critical pessimism that faces the immanentist prophetism, which is typical of intramundane futurist projects that we read today in political publications. To fulfill our goals, we fully enter into the debate on the pandemic through contemporary authors such as Foucault, Agamben, Fukuyama, Han, and other relevant thinkers. After the hybris of the pandemic, we propose an ethics of caring for oneself and others in a parrhesia where, what is hidden and biopolitically manipulated, comes to light as a support for the different democratic systems, where Covid-19 must be fought.