Philosophy and pandemic

Abstract

This work presents three critical aspects related to philosophy in these times of pandemic. The first has to do with the end of Minerva's Owl as a universal symbol of philosophy, that is, the end of the idea that philosophy only manages to explain the world once the events have occurred. The idea of ??a simultaneity of philosophy with the facts and a certain transforming power of thought is defended. The second makes a critical distinction, from a Latin American and Global South horizon (which is where Latin Americans must think if we want to philosophize with meaning), between ‘Metaphysics / Ontology of the universal and abstract being’ and ‘Historical ontologies of the be-here’. The significance and value of historical ontologies as theoretical decolonization devices are defended against metaphysics. The ‘historical onto-logies of being-here’ ask themselves, not about being abstract, but about existence and daily life endangered by the pandemic. This allows in the third part to position life, not only as an ethical value capable of guiding human action, but also as a universal foundation and a critical category. As a conclusion, the idea that the pandemic has revealed the true end of Eurocentric modernity and has opened the challenge of thinking in diverse but equal societies in the right to existence and life is upheld.