Covid, the alarm from Adriano Prosperi. Beware of the fear of freedom – Corriere.it

by time news

Two great illusions have fallen with the eruption of the pandemic from Covid-19 on the world scene, notes the historian Adriano Prosperi in the agile but dense essay Trembling is human (Solferino). The first has an existential character, it refers to humanity as such. The second, on the other hand, concerns specifically our age, the vision of the world which has prevailed for some decades, especially in the West.

Adriano Prosperi’s book «Tremare is human. A brief history of fear “is published by Solferino (pages 138, € 9.90)

On the one hand, there is the placing in brackets of our irremediable transience. Even if we all know we are destined to extinguish us, Prosperi notes, “the reality of life rests on the deception of an instinctive and rooted persuasion of one’s own immortality”. If the thought of the end occupied our mind permanently, it would be very difficult for us to act, to rejoice, to engage in some activity, to build a future. This is why the sudden sense of precariousness of existence produced by the health crisis hits us so painfully.


Adriano Prosperi (Cerreto Guidi, Florence, 1939) is professor emeritus of modern history at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and is a member of the Accademia dei Lincei
Adriano Prosperi (Cerreto Guidi, Florence, 1939) is professor emeritus of modern history at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and is a member of the Accademia dei Lincei

Then there is another more recent illusion, the unfounded certainty, also exhibited by fashionable intellectuals, of having closed a harrowing chapter that Covid has instead reopened. We believed that we had canceled forever, at least in advanced countries, “the periodic appointment with epidemics, their immanent presence like a black thread in human history”. The reappearance of a disease capable of spreading and killing en masse on a global scale was a rude denial in this regard. And Prosperi draws a wise and irrefutable conclusion. It is necessary, writes the historian, “to decide to read human history in the context of a larger container: natural history”.

In short, the pandemic has brought us back to our dimension of bulky guests on a planet of which we are not the absolute masters and not even a necessary component. Indeed, Prosperi observes, we risk finding ourselves in a situation similar to that described by the science fiction writer HG Wells in his War of the worlds: a species endowed with extraordinary technical means that is annihilated by an unknown virus, of which it is not prepared to face aggression on the biological level.

It is a lesson that applies to Covid-19, against which at least we quickly produced effective vaccines, but perhaps even more so for global warming and other dangers deriving from the degradation of the environment.

The inseparable link between man and nature, of which he himself is a part, constitutes one of the main threads along which Prosperi’s reflections move, which puts into play all the knowledge accumulated in his long studies as a teacher and academic of the Lincei. Evocative and vivid are the re-enactments of past deadly plagues and the psychosis that ensued in the population, including the educated classes. Pages in which the author’s profound knowledge and his undoubted mastery in handling very complex topics are felt.

According to Prosperi, the great intellectual challenge of modernity, starting from the thought of Baruch Spinoza, it consisted in cutting “the knot that binds fear and hope”, on which the call of the supernatural is based, to indicate in the use of reason the way to discover “the root of happiness”. But that secularized approach today shows the rope in the face of the spread of irrational impulses that skilled leaders are ready to ride.

The author does not have a ready recipe for the ills that afflict us. It does not recommend remedies, it points out old and new problems, starting with the deleterious and very Italian vice of neglecting precious public structures, from healthcare to schools, passing through archives and libraries. Certainly, he warns, we must recognize that “an acceleration of historical time” is taking place and we do not know where it will lead us.

The pandemic will leave deep marks because it has rigidly limited “the freedom of movement and social relations”, that is, a “fundamental historical conquest of modern liberal democracies”. In addition, it has worn out one of the most precious resources available to human societies. “Fear – Prosperi notes alarmed – has canceled trust, transforming the relationship with the other into a threat to be avoided”.

How much will the psychological conditioning of this experience weigh on our future? There is a lot to fear, because within many of us a particularly insidious fear is developing, acutely pointed out by Prosperi, “the fear of freedom”. An enemy as insidious as Covid-19, which depresses the spirit of initiative and the taste for risk just when a whip of energy would be needed to set in motion the necessary recovery, not only economic.

Yet, Prosperi still points out, a “new awareness” has also arisen from the crisis which authorizes not only to see dark clouds on the horizon. The grip of the pandemic has made “each living a citizen of the world”, beyond the barriers of languages, cultures and borders, “creating a feeling of human closeness that only the final exit from the crisis can obscure”. Here, let us really hope that that feeling is not obscured.

May 5, 2021 (change May 5, 2021 | 21:53)

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