The Legitimization of Violence: Individual, Crowd, and Authority during the Covid-19 Pandemic

This book examines the Covid-19 pandemic from a social, cultural and philosophical perspective. In a unique and innovative approach, it addresses its subject by recounting the authors’ thoughts during the two long years of the pandemic, from 2020 to 2022. A pandemic reveals numerous tensions in society: forces that remain hidden during prosperous times, such as fear, violence, or the devaluation of human rights, emerge as significant factors during a social crisis. A pandemic is, therefore, useful as a phenomenon for studying human weaknesses and for evaluating the development of humanitarian crises when few people care about appearances, and there is little to hide because life itself is in the balance. This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and scholars of biomedical and social sciences, as well as those working in the fields of public health and political philosophy.

Maia Kiladze is an Associate Professor in the School of Science and Technology at the University of Georgia. She earned a Ph.D. in Life Sciences from Ilia State University (Tbilisi, Georgia) and has worked at the Department of Experimental Neurophysiology at the University Clinic of Bonn (Germany).

Vladimer Luarsabishvili is a Professor of School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Caucasus University, Tbilisi, Georgia, and a visiting professor at the University of the Frontier, Temuco, Chile. He received a Ph.D. in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature from Madrid Autonomous University, Spain, and went onto postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His recent publications include Ideas and Methodologies in Historical Research (2022), Rethinking Mamardashvili: Philosophical Perspectives, Analytical Insights (2022), Teoría de la interideidad. Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer y Miguel de Unamuno (2022), and Retórica Cultural: Metáfora, Contexto, Traducción. Las Voces de Rubén Darío, Miguel de Unamuno, Gabriel Aresti, Kirmen Uribe y Harkaitz Cano (2024).