Alexander Dugin
Hello, you are watching the series “Thoughts during the Plague.” Today I would like to talk about philosophical issues related to the coronavirus epidemic.
We have already said that from Heidegger's point of view, Dasein is determined by the attitude towards death. In the era of a pandemic, an epidemic, death that comes to us and turns out to be in close proximity with us, enters our attention zone and becomes an active factor of our presence. From the point of view of existential philosophy, this increases the acuteness of our presence in the world. Our Dasein in this situation awakens to itself, coming to fixation.
Usually, when death is out of the question, Dasein spreads, scatters, disperses, forgets about its finiteness and, thus, about itself. Instead, the alienated Das Man mode is activated when Man denkt, Man trinkt. When instead of saying “I think,” “I drink,” they say - “drinking,” “thinking,” “eating,” “sleeping.”
In fact, Das Man is the one who does all this: eats, sleeps, thinks, is present, moves, walks, enjoys or is sad when we are absent. We think that this is us, but in fact this Das Man is someone, something that does not coincide with anything particular. It thinks, it sleeps, it eats, it falls... But it exists through us. This is when there is no death.
And when death becomes close to us, we are shaken from it, we do not agree - Man denkt, Man trinkt. We need it to be ourselves - because death is near, it is standing outside the door or is already climbing through the window. In this situation, we are no longer satisfied that Das Man is doing this instead of us - we are starting to do it ourselves. Maybe this is the last time we think, drink, eat, watch, walk, move, talk, breathe, etc.
Accordingly, from the point of view of existential philosophy from the point of view of Heidegger, such an existence in the face of death is more authentic, more genuine. At this moment, the presence in the world becomes ours, because before that it was not ours, but Das Man’s one. When death comes to us, we begin to truly perceive this breath as ours, this thinking as ours, this feeling as ours. We are returning to our Dasein.
