Phenomenology, the Pandemic, and I

Ishtar Warda

I) Introduction: The Pandemic and I

I have always considered myself an “introvert” and this pandemic has made me realise, or solidified, how self-reliant I am when it comes to emotional stability and mental stimulation. I do not require others to “pass the time.” So, limited human interaction from people outside of my immediate family has not been an extremely pressing issue. I guess I subscribe to the Aristotelean conception of happiness being contemplation (i.e., activity of the rational part of the soul). I play piano, I read books, I think about and try to write personal philosophical works. I used to feel guilty when I would just sit around and watch senseless shows or YouTube videos, I felt as if I was not making the most of my time. It was not until recently when I questioned why I felt obligated to do so at all. I did not ask for this time. Some would say that this time is a “gift.” But who gifted it to me? I do not believe in a higher power, and even if there were one who bestowed this time upon me, I owe her nothing. Why is there an informal ought when it comes to productivity and time? If it brings me happiness and is not immoral—simply according to the ethics of common decency—to sit on my bed and watch nature documentaries or play The Last of Us Part II, then this is what I will do. I do not believe in having to justify the passing or use of my time because it is precisely that—mine.

I cannot speak to the experience of others, but I am sure it is not too different from mine in terms of memory, or lack thereof. I consider myself navigationally challenged; I am terrible at reading maps and I can get lost/disoriented pretty easily; my saving grace is usually landmarks. I orient myself physically according to things that stand out in an empirical/physical way. If I am walking down Queen St. West from Osgoode station and hit the McDonalds at the large intersection, then that is when I know to turn right to get to Sonic Boom. My memory works the same way, if there are no “landmarks” (i.e., important/significant events) then I cannot really recall a period of time. I guess this brings memory down to an “empirical” form; it is not simply the record of our experience of time as one endlessly flowing stream towards the next present moment. Memory is the tool our minds use to flag something relatively important. You probably do not remember what you ate for breakfast, but you might remember the name of your third grade teacher. Perhaps this is reminiscent of how Nietzsche’s concept of (moral) consciousness depends on our faculty of memory which is strengthened through violent punishment which bonds mind and body. He says that to create an enduring memory in the mind, “one burns in so that it remains in one’s memory: only what does not cease to give pain remains in one’s memory” (p.38). Psychological (and physical) markers of memories serve as these mental “landmarks.” Perhaps we can think of any event or agent which acted upon us at one point in time that had managed to evoke some kind of above-average emotion as having aided in the crafting of memory.

This was all to say, simply, that I had not experienced many moments which evoked a considerable emotion within me so as to facilitate the creation of a memory within the past couple of months. I have been in a vegetative state which has provoked the thought: “what is the point?” But it is precisely this beautiful thought which has allowed me to achieve some form of tranquility within myself. Life is meaningless and that is a positive thing. It would be ill-fitting to call life a “gift” because this would imply that we are better off by it. It is absurd to believe that we are better off existing than not existing. In non-existence you do not have the capacity to be better or worse off; all you are is simply that you are not — a capacity only for incapacity. Existence and every action within it is a random event, everything just happens to be; not necessarily, but just because.

We experience all things singularly — coming into existence, experiencing existence, and ceasing to exist — because we have singular minds. Loneliness is within ourselves, it is our companion, it is our insurance of independence—we alone have the power to make what we want of ourselves, to act on our own singular will. It is not a pessimistic or nihilistic view, it is optimistic. We are alone with ourselves. We are our own masters, we are our own means, we are our own end. Quarantine has catalyzed my existential tendencies and has inspired me to document them. Boredom and meaninglessness are facilitators of creativity—what some would call “a productive use of time.”

II) Martin Heidegger: Basic Problems of Phenomenology

Heidegger’s discussion of the ontological difference, namely the distinction between existence (being qua being) and existents (entities) (p.256) reminds me of the Socratic method of discovery of any unknown thing where he rejects mere examples of the thing and instead forges onwards towards the thing itself. This distinction between existence (being itself) and existents (entities) is actually discussed within Plato’s dialogue The Sophist where the answer to the question ‘what is it to exist?’ must be explanatory rather than exemplary (i.e ‘what makes X an X’, rather than ‘Y is an X’). So, it is not that the entire traditional account of being has presupposed the knowledge of what being or ‘to exist’ means because Plato surely had not. Anyhow, I think Heidegger’s treatment of the dasein—‘there being’: human existence as the kind of being that can be ‘there’/in the world—as always being beyond itself by being carried away by the future in an ‘ecstatic’ sense—stepping outside itself—(p.266-7) is quite interesting in relation to our experience of COVID-19. The dasein is not a thing, it is a process; it is not, it is always becoming. This is quite a Heraclitean notion; everything is always becoming, nothing ever ‘is’ because flux/indeterminacy/motion/change is the truth of the phenomenological world. Temporality is the ecstatic unity of past, present, and future (p.267); this is original time (p.257).

It is interesting to relate this to the experience of the pandemic because my experience has been simultaneously rather stagnant on a surface level but quite ‘unfinished’ in a deeper sense. By ‘unfinished’ I mean unsettled; it is always becoming, it never is. I feel restless not simply in the claustrophobic sense of quarantine but in my experience of time. I am aware of this process of becoming, it is not just that I do not want to settle in this ‘now’ of quarantine but that I am unable. Just as Heidegger’s dasein is always stepping beyond itself I feel as though I am unwillingly falling within the next moment like I am not perpendicular to the floor but always at an angle falling towards it. Successive moments of ‘now’ where we have a unity of expecting the future, retaining the past and making present (‘enpresenting’) the present (p.259-60) is what gives us our everyday time. My time has become distorted, this unity has come undone because my future is not ‘expected’ in the same sense as before, I am restless because I do not know; I have no true understanding of my future, my past within quarantine has become muddled, and my present is restless.

Perhaps this is how I can step beyond myself as the dasein and leave this common sense of time. This common experience of time is inauthentic because it understands being qua being in relation to beings/entities; we have derived our concept of being from the entities instead of being in itself (p.268). Temporality in an authentic sense is finite (p.273), the dasein’s authentic perspective is brought about by the anxiety of death, by acknowledging our mortality. My qualm with Heidegger’s presentation of authentic time as starting with the recognition of morality or our finitude which is initiated by anxiety or dread of death is that this seems inauthentic itself. Why should we dread the truth? We are mortal beings and recognizing this fact surely is a catalyst for achieving authenticity— being true to one’s own self—but this anxiety needs to then be transformed into tranquility in order to truly acknowledge finitude in a meaningful sense, otherwise it will become a barrier to achieving true authenticity. Should we not feel liberated by acknowledging our mortality and live authentically by accepting this truth in spite of death? Anxiety of death must evolve into tranquility, a peaceful acceptance of the inevitable, in order to truly be authentic. This is because anxiety and dread oriented towards that which cannot be changed is useless and an inauthentic understanding of the object of our angst. If we truly accept death and finitude within ourselves then our understanding will be more authentic if we accepted it peacefully by recognizing that there is nothing to be done. Anxiety and dread of death seem to be an intermediate phase before we are truly authentic in tranquility towards death.

In my restless experience of COVID-19 my common time has become disoriented because the unity of past, present, and future has been disrupted. My future is more uncertain than it has ever been but recognizing this and accepting it has given me peace. I am authentically recognizing my mortality as a subject of the pandemic experience and transforming my angst in relation to the uncertain future into tranquility in relation to an inevitably and unavoidably uncertain future. My experience of time is not filled with dread or anxiety, it is restless in the sense of a deepened unforeseen-ness but interestingly tranquil because I recognize and understand I have no meaningful control over this truth right now. COVID-19 has also sped up my journey to an authentic experience of time because it has proved to me without question how small we are. People are mortal, there is death all around me which is hard to ignore. I could face death, people I know could face death. While there are cautionary measures one could (and should) take such as wearing a mask in public areas and excessive handwashing, there is nothing to be done about our inherent finitude. Our image of the invincible, rational creatures we are, has been shattered. Humans have tended to remove themselves from the natural: we create ‘artificial’ things, we are removed from instinctive reaction by rational deliberation. But we are natural, organic beings like all other animals. Our comfortable façade of immortality has been swept away by the tide of COVID-19. Is this a good thing? Why is authentic temporality intrinsically good? Was it ‘better’ to live in an inauthentic experience of temporality where death was removed from our understanding of time?

III) Emmanuel Levinas: Totality and Infinity

Levinas’ concept of time is constructed around an ethics which is highly dependent on the Other and our relationship to them (p.220). We are always in social relations and have always been affected by the face of the other. He moves from the interior where the individual separates themselves and creates an interior space where life can be enjoyed and where they can be at home. We are removed from this interiority by the face of the other person. It is a relationship of mutual recognition and seen-ness where I become responsible and have a duty to respond to their call. Time is inherently inherently social, it depends on one’s relation to another, it is not the mere perpetuity of ‘now’ but one’s interaction and relation with the face of another (p.220). We are, in a way, simultaneously within and without the relationship with the other; being a part of it but not being consumed by it.

Independence is not about being self-caused because you are born by another. Freedom for Levinas is about anarchy, about a world without an origin (p.223). The temporal being is both independent and exposed to another being (p.224). The temporal being postpones the inevitable violence of death; to be temporal is to defer death. Thus, it is not from freedom which our understanding of time and temporality emerges, but out of time that our concept of freedom is created. To death we say ‘not yet’ we know it will come one day but we push it away until tomorrow, and tomorrow we will push it yet again. I am resisting death. War and violence are what make death imminent now because, of course, we will all eventually die. But one wields a blade to cut down one’s remaining time in corporeality (p.225). My freedom consists in adjournment, in putting off death. War and murder would be useless if the other were not postponing death, the aggressor intends to aid death in its pursuit of its resister. War and violence are necessarily aimed at the kind of entities which have this postponing relationship with death.

This view of one’s relationship with death and the postponement of the inevitable is quite interestingly applied to the case of COVID-19. In a sense, one cannot hold a shield against the blade of corona in the same way that one may defend themselves on a battlefield. Although masks and enhanced hygiene practices will help, it is not as though there is a face to this aggressor. COVID-19 is a faceless other which is attacking one’s postponement of death. To what end does it do this? Wars, although the bloodshed is unjustifiable, are often fought for obvious ‘reasons’ whether it be territory, power, resources, etc. but this virus is waging a war with no end. Although researchers are scrambling to find a vaccine, the virus is not some one face which we can all direct our anger towards in a meaningful sense. It is a cowardly killer. My freedom which consists in my ability to push death away from my soul is transformed in the context of a faceless killer. My delaying of the inevitable is carried out in a different fashion; there is no amount of training and mastery of a weapons which will help defend oneself from this foe, but it is our trust in one another’s mutual recognition of mortality. Because we each know one another to be mortal, we mutually respect our finitude and vulnerability and (in an ideal world) we go to lengths to protect one another by shielding our own faces.

So, our relationship to the other as the face is modified. We all become the same masked face. A face which removes one another from our comforting interiority out into the reality of our exterior vulnerability. We meld into one recognizable face consisting in a covered nose and mouth, with anxious eyes. We see ourselves in the faces of others. Our mutual vulnerability and mortality has been recognized and we depend on the other. Time is tracked not by our watches but by the duration for this particularized relationship to one another. How long will I see my masked face in the faces of others? How long will I have to maintain a distance from those others whom I see myself in so clearly? How long will this silent killer strike us down and keep us from one another? Time is measured by how we interact with one another. Our present consists in a distance of six feet, masked faces, and the smell of hand sanitizer. How long will this present last?

Works Cited

Heidegger, M. (1982). Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans by Albert Hofstadter. Indiana University Press.

Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and Infinity, trans by Lingis. Duquesne University Press.

Nietzsche, F. (1998). On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. Translated by Maudemarie Clark & Alan J. Swensen. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company (Original work published 1887).