Piergiorgio Donatelli

This book centres on the notion of human life that lies at the foundation of contemporary thinking in the areas of ethics, law and politics. Centrally, the book addresses the deep divide, characteristic of this thinking, between: on the one hand, those who wish to do away with any anthropological understandings of the human, and appeal to mere facts delivered by science; and, on the other hand, critics who defend an anthropological understanding of human life that is tied to traditional, teleological, metaphysics. In short: knowledge of the world is given over to the sciences and moral theory is considered to operate in a distinct, and insulated, domain. But this opposition has, Piergiorgio Donatelli argues here, outlived its usefulness. Through a discussion of the intimate human spheres of reproduction, dying and sexuality, he argues that we now live in a world characterized by new ways of living: by novel rearrangements of emotions, and by the modification, and in some cases a radical rupture in, existing ideas of human life. These shifts challenge any established separation between facts and norms, between human life and its conceptualization. As such, it is argued here, they simultaneously offer the possibility of a new, socially articulated, understanding of the relationship between subjectivity and normativity. Engaging pressing contemporary themes, this book will be invaluable to scholars in the fields of ethics, law and political theory, and both analytic and continental philosophy.

This chapter delves into scenes of disaster as crucial sites to explore the role of forms of life and the ordinary. The habitual and ordinary have the power to bring life together when a form of life breaks down. However the ordinary is constantly at play in our lives allowing for what we perceive as autonomous agents to make choices. The theory of anthropologist Veena DasDas, Veena is specifically examined in this chapter for the important lessons she reveals from the philosophical tradition of Wittgenstein and Stanley CavellCavell, Stanley. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of shifting attention to the network of interdependencies that gives life to the great values of democratic societies and especially to the invisible work of care lavished by many invisible people. This lesson has not been learned.