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I always laugh when colleagues who are not philosophers ask me to come give a philosophical touch to a conversation as this one. I bet they didn’t know that I am only fascinated by philosophical reflections and that I do not have sufficient philosophical training to be in a position to aspire to be a professional in that indescribably obscure but extremely fascinating discipline.
In giving this piece a title, Gabriel Garcia Marquez Love in the Time of Cholera came to mind. The title of this piece might therefore not make its intent immediately obvious. And this will derive first from the thousands of misgivings that people have about the enterprise of philosophy. To sum this, philosophy is one of the most exotic and obscure disciplines ever invented, especially with its inquiry into what even the most reflective of humans find most obtuse to follow. And what better time to set aside obscure reasoning and argumentation than in a pandemic, and one that is occasioned by a novel virus that challenges all of our finest reflections.
In many reports, I have read about the heroic efforts of the scientists, medical practitioners and health workers. Indeed, these are the very essence of human reaction against the coronavirus. All across the globe, the COVID-19 has ravaged human lives and human institutions, from the economy to the most mundane of human existence. Just five months ago, no one would have ever thought that humanity would find itself at this critical juncture of endangerment. And yet, here we are. The entire world is in lockdown! And the globe is reeling from the tragic consequences of just a tiny inorganic vector of nature that has terribly undermine the resilience of humanity’s political power. The present pandemic is, in essence, a consequence of human desire for progress.
Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have been in a race to overreach our own capacity for scientific and technological development. We are paradoxically inexorably bent on self-extinction through our civilizing and technologizing mission. And when we wittingly or unwittingly let loose the new virus, we were ironically not ready for its terrible imprint upon our lives, the very lives we wanted to better by culturing the virus in the laboratories in the first place. Thus, we were engaged in progress but we were not ready for its consequences. With the virus and the pandemic, we are forced to learn the hard lesson that the desire for unbridled progress comes with a steep price. We are forced to retreat into ourselves and reflect. And the whole essence of a philosophic life is deep reflective awareness of those ideas and concepts by which our lives and existence hang in the balance.
It was Thucydides, the ancient Greek historian, who once insisted that “history is philosophy teaching example.” And yet, humans have failed consistently to learn by the many tragic examples which history and philosophy have taught. There have been several calamities that have befallen us since we commenced our civilizational march to where we are today in the clutch of a global pandemic. Several wars, especially the first and the second world wars, decimated millions of people. Several dictatorial and autocratic madness also led to severe genocidal bloodshed. Adolf Hitler singlehandedly created the Holocaust that wasted the lives of six million Jews. Joseph Stalin brutalized and killed over twenty million Russians. Before these brutal dictators, Genghis Khan, the Mongol emperor, and Tamerlane the Uzbekistan “Scourge of God,” made sport by killing and making pyramids out of the skulls of the dead. And several terrible pandemics have ravaged the world and killed millions. In 165 AD, the Antonine plague took five million lives. The plague of Justinian (541-542) killed twenty-five million. The Black Death caused by the bubonic plague that occurred between 1346 and 1353 decimated between 75 and 200 million people. The Spanish Flu of 1918 took between 20 to 50 million people. And finally, the AIDS/HIV pandemic, at its peak between 2005 and 2012, killed 36 million people across the world.
The coronavirus has so far infected over three million globally, with the death toll at 246,979. Philosophy is the love and the pursuit of wisdom in human affairs. And wisdom in this sense derives from the human capacity to learn from past mistakes, the example by which philosophy itself teaches us historically, and benefit from them. Philosophy teaches us to reflect not only on the internal trajectory of our lives, but also on its external social and planetary trajectories. Three of the most significant philosophical questions we encounter are: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we headed? These fundamental questions provide the dynamics by which we can fulfil our innate yearning for understanding about our being and our being-in-the-world. There is no way humans can make sense of their world and their place in it if our existence lack the solid self-reflexivity required to constantly monitor how our affairs impact on ourselves and on our world. The history of Philosophy itself sends sufficient messages to enable us take cognizance of our reflective capacity and how fundamental they could be to our flourishing. Take the Oracle at Delphi as a first example. In 1400 BC, the shrine was considered to be the most important in Greece. And this is even more so because Delphi itself was considered to be the omphalos (navel) of the world. Carved to the front of the temple of the Oracle is the world-famous maxim, supposedly given by Apollo: Know Thyself. There is no greater challenge to humans to learn from their own artistic creations. Apollo and whatever he might have said are creation of the minds of humans. Socrates, one of the greatest philosophers to have lived, iterated the Delphic maxim to mean “an unexamined life is not worth living.”
At the personal and individual level, a life given to debauchery and the whims and caprices that are borne aloft on the vicissitudes of human existence is a life that is not greater than that of an animal. Animals live but do not exist. Only humans exist and even possess the capacity, according to Martin Heidegger, to ask questions about their being in the world. At the public level, an unexamined life is one lived with the unbridled deployment of political power and scientific knowledge that is not moderated by a fundamental awareness of how the fate of the world is intertwined with the fate of all of us. The earth is our home, and it makes no reflective sense to destroy your home while it yet determines your own survival. It makes even less sense to keep up a trajectory of development that takes humans to the brink of self-destruction, all in the name of scientific and technological civilization. All this fly in the face of our collective self-preservation. And yet we have consistently ignored not only the dangerous groanings of the earth under the burden of industrialized development. We have also failed to heed the warnings of several centuries of mistakes and mishaps that our collective hubris—as the Lords and Masters of the Universe—has inflicted on us. Nuclear proliferation has become the new global sport. And the destruction of the world as we know it—a collective achievement of many centuries—lies in the hands of a few superpowers, from the United States to China, and from Russia to North Korea, all ruled by megalomaniacs who see the world only in terms of a minuscule portion of it. It is therefore only a reflection of our unreflective awareness that have made racism a powerful global governance framework that constantly threatens the survival of the universe in terms of our egoistic posturing on behalf of one race being greater than the other. And we have become so inexorably caught in the grip of progress that we have failed to reflect on how we have continuously kept destroying our common home in the name of progress. Inexorable “progressive” development has underdeveloped our globe to the point of almost no-return. The scourge of climate change has brought us to the brink of global destruction. Global warning has been taken to be the greatest threat that faces humans in the 21st century. The earth is warming up at an alarming steady pace as a result of the incessant human-generated greenhouse gases. This has brought untold hardship to the human and natural ecological balance, and the crises these have caused have been incalculable.
Add this pandemic to the terrible clear and present danger that the COVID-19 has brought upon human, and we have a sense of what we are facing. Fortunately, the human spirit has always remained the resilient savior of the human race. We have survived every epidemic, wars, calamities and disasters that we have managed to inflict on ourselves or those that nature itself has angrily inflicted on us. The question is: how long will that resilient last? Would it be able to withstand a global nuclear catastrophe? The resilient human will requires the philosophic spirit to bring it back into a fundamental realization of our finitude as humans. Philosophy pushes us forward in quick steps, but also compels us to always reflect on those steps that push us forward. It is the most self-reflexive of all discipline that not only interrogate itself and its disciplinary progress, but also calls for the examination of humans whose ultimate intellectual achievement is philosophical reflection.As we approach this year’s World Philosophy Day—Thursday November 19, 2020—it will be a good time to reflect on philosophy in the time of the pandemic. It will be most appropriate for UNESCO, for instance, to hold a world summit that brings philosophers, politicians, intellectuals, religious, civil and opinion leaders together to deeply reflect not only on the fate of philosophy as a global discipline, but also on its fundamental neglect in the reflection on a world that has substituted raw political power balanced on hubristic ego for a deep fundamental reflection on the fate of the world and our ultimate finitude as humans. Let me end with C. S. Lewis: Philosophy, like art and friendship might not have survival value; “rather, it is one of those things that give value to survival.”
Prof. Tunji Olaopa Retired Federal Permanent Secretary & Professor of Public Administration [email protected] [email protected]
i’ m so buoyed by the revered enthusiast covid 19 philosopher, Rtd FG PS & Professor of Public Administration Dr Tunji Olaopa for doing justice far much more philosophically than my own few minutes ago reply to three other academics namely Segun Ogungbemi,Emaeagwali & Kenneth Harrow all of professorial standing who reacted with a decolonised mindset whereas a Botswana woman who s an African is setting alien standard for testing Madagaskar formulation! Professor EMEAGWALI WARNED THAT ABU Profs shouldn’t yield beyond defending their own Nigerian solution- besides what &what they used & not the proportions.But then 21st c .scientists ought to heed what Isaac Asimov said or wrote in one of his numerous scifis that a Robot must not injure a human being
.Why Prof Olaopa s article appealed to me thematically and philosophically is that humankind have jettisoned their humanity and have allowed egoism to overpower their tech revolution desire. Mindful that there s a sense in preparing for external aggression at any time but is there a sense of civility in increasing budget year in year out for a future equipping from now with military hardware far more superior and capable of destroying the world vegetation and human lives in whatever habitat!
The unhealthy rivalry in accumulating genocidal war weapons after WW 1 & WW2 have obsessed them to the extent developing nations too blindly heartlessly mimic them and all have forgotten that we arent the only creatures on planet earth and there are other lethal pathogens including inorganic variants we labelled as viruses that can equally wipe out the whole world if we continue to search for tech products of destruction than counter research products that can destroy parasites and bacterial diseases.
Professor Tunji Olaopa chastised all of mankind that we have neither learned from remote nor recent history.Are we trying to be insensitive — erase from history the these wars of genocide =of ignorance of human values where casualties were in millions including the Jews ,Europeans Africans, Japanese and to be candid Americans too – all lost incredible population of their nationalities during these world wars that led to the forming of League of Nations which later morphed to The United Nations.
You and I know that if these superpowers have led their former colonies who are now independent states NEVER to emulate their advanced masters who are still in the rat race for military power but redesign their development patterns towards Human Development & social well-being -they couldn’t have been so impoverished as at now and they too could ve had SUPERIOR IMPERVIOUS WALL BUILT against viruses of any type & virulence.
Had it been we were locally and globally focused primarily on our own survival armory by being smart to deploy all our studies in the humanities as well as the sciences to the JUST USE of our environment – in 2020 about 75 years after the WWs we probably wouldnt have had to confront the dastardly invisible war of any of corona-viruses let alone the novel covid19 because we have neglected the most vital ubiquitous foes -the microbes & their parasitic livelihood Right on our fragile bodies & its fluctuating ANTIBODIES.IMAGINE enormous $900 billions of US MILITARY budget and those chasing her is not far in size of commitment all put together !
Whereas such a LIFE CHANGING budget could have been used to support or help develop Developing nations to fund research in NUCLEAR RESEARCH FOR PEACE and fund studies in agricultural ,biological and medical studies germane to food security,ENHANCING WELL-BEING preventing toxicity.Hard earned money of both advanced nations and less developed nations could have helped to shed light on mystery pathogens. Building a solid knowledge of these invisible creatures should have been MANKIND s planning & philosophical priorities. & XYZ facts of biological control, plant pathology, species of crops that can also prevent plant bad harvest ,drought and natural disasters like wild fire and parasitic invasion hitherto unknown . .
to Africa & planet earth could have been our surmountable heritage to manage. May God s infinite mercies heal the world & defeat covid19 soonest & preserve millions of lives infected.
Thank you Prof Olaopa for provoking this contribution online albeit impromptu.
gbemi tijani mst,paul harris fellow & former unesco club founder & leader in the 70s,CONVENER:CIVICCONCERN
ps collateral comments that tally with Professor Tunji OLAOPA s perspectives that man never learn from history ! i concur with this view and I already blogged this elsewhere online and was preparing to switch all devices and go to bed and i jam into Prof s bold philosophy on covid19 . in Africans in diaspora are reviewing covid19 & Africa & Nigerians scientists response & unwarranted credibility issues from outside WITH AVALANCHE OF rejoinders -MST
Here s the 3rd post i sent germane to Prof s reflections on mankind s callous and inhuman pathway…Professors Emeagwali & Kenneth Harrow & Femi KOLAPO shared positive perspectives that prompted me to reply modestly this in their privileged website USADIALOGUE FOR AFRICA convened by Professor Toyin Falola
…finally here s the final piece i sent prior to jamming into Prof Olaopa s article on Philosophy of covid19-MST
i’ m so buoyed by the revered enthusiast covid 19 philosopher, Rtd FG PS & Professor of Public Administration Dr Tunji Olaopa for doing justice far much more philosophically than my own few minutes ago reply to three other academics namely Segun Ogungbemi,Emaeagwali & Kenneth Harrow all of professorial standing who reacted with a decolonised mindset whereas a Botswana woman who s an African is setting alien standard for testing Madagaskar formulation! Professor EMEAGWALI WARNED THAT ABU Profs shouldn’t yield beyond defending their own Nigerian solution- besides what &what they used & not the proportions.But then 21st c .scientists ought to heed what Isaac Asimov said or wrote in one of his numerous scifis that a Robot must not injure a human being
.Why Prof Olaopa s article appealed to me thematically and philosophically is that humankind have jettisoned their humanity and have allowed egoism to overpower their tech revolution desire. Mindful that there s a sense in preparing for external aggression at any time but is there a sense of civility in increasing budget year in year out for a future equipping from now with military hardware far more superior and capable of destroying the world vegetation and human lives in whatever habitat!
The unhealthy rivalry in accumulating genocidal war weapons after WW 1 & WW2 have obsessed them to the extent developing nations too blindly heartlessly mimic them and all have forgotten that we arent the only creatures on planet earth and there are other lethal pathogens including inorganic variants we labelled as viruses that can equally wipe out the whole world if we continue to search for tech products of destruction than counter research products that can destroy parasites and bacterial diseases.
Professor Tunji Olaopa chastised all of mankind that we have neither learned from remote nor recent history.Are we trying to be insensitive — erase from history the these wars of genocide =of ignorance of human values where casualties were in millions including the Jews ,Europeans Africans, Japanese and to be candid Americans too – all lost incredible population of their nationalities during these world wars that led to the forming of League of Nations which later morphed to The United Nations.
You and I know that if these superpowers have led their former colonies who are now independent states NEVER to emulate their advanced masters who are still in the rat race for military power but redesign their development patterns towards Human Development & social well-being -they couldn’t have been so impoverished as at now and they too could ve had SUPERIOR IMPERVIOUS WALL BUILT against viruses of any type & virulence.
Had it been we were locally and globally focused primarily on our own survival armory by being smart to deploy all our studies in the humanities as well as the sciences to the JUST USE of our environment – in 2020 about 75 years after the WWs we probably wouldnt have had to confront the dastardly invisible war of any of corona-viruses let alone the novel covid19 because we have neglected the most vital ubiquitous foes -the microbes & their parasitic livelihood Right on our fragile bodies & its fluctuating ANTIBODIES.IMAGINE enormous $900 billions of US MILITARY budget and those chasing her is not far in size of commitment all put together !
Whereas such a LIFE CHANGING budget could have been used to support or help develop Developing nations to fund research in NUCLEAR RESEARCH FOR PEACE and fund studies in agricultural ,biological and medical studies germane to food security,ENHANCING WELL-BEING preventing toxicity.Hard earned money of both advanced nations and less developed nations could have helped to shed light on mystery pathogens. Building a solid knowledge of these invisible creatures should have been MANKIND s planning & philosophical priorities. & XYZ facts of biological control, plant pathology, species of crops that can also prevent plant bad harvest ,drought and natural disasters like wild fire and parasitic invasion hitherto unknown . .
to Africa & planet earth could have been our surmountable heritage to manage. May God s infinite mercies heal the world & defeat covid19 soonest & preserve millions of lives infected.
Thank you Prof Olaopa for provoking this contribution online albeit impromptu.
gbemi tijani mst,paul harris fellow & former unesco club founder & leader in the 70s,CONVENER:CIVICCONCERN