La krisis del Coronavirus. Una sfida inattesa per l’essere umano e le società contemporanee. Considerazioni filosofico-giuridiche

The following essay offers some legal-philosophical reflections about the current pandemic resulting from the spread of coronavirus Covid-19. These are concentrated around a few core-themes: (1) the role and of mass media and the problem of credibility; (2) the issue of cooperation among states (mostly within the EU); (3) the complex role of rules—and the relationship between normativity and moral agency – in a moment when individual freedoms are being limited in favor of other (health-related) priorities. Finally, the author offers some brief critical remarks on (4) the limits of utilitarian ethics with reference to the issue of ‘herd immunity’ as a possible strategy for assessing the Covid-19 pandemic. Such themes demonstrate how the current situation poses important questions for our contemporary societies involving anthropological, sociological, political and ethical issues. In this sense, this crisis is seen – as the semantic range of the Greek word ‘krisis’ suggests – not only with regard to its dramatic implications, but also as a chance for an overall rethinking of some underlying premises that characterize our post-modern societies, especially in Western countries.