Pandemic and lifestyles: patience

An article by Stefano Santasilia
on the virtue of patience in times of pandemic

This article offers a brief excursus on patience and the value it can hold in the context of the current pandemic. The etymological origin of the term reveals a fundamental ambiguity, which frees the concept of patience from the prejudice that links it to an attitude of resignation and inaction. The reference to the phenomenology of life developed by Michel Henry, in which the affective dimension in the form of an original pathos plays a prominent role, allows us to deepen the meaning of patience by linking it to the original dimension of life itself. The subsequent analysis of fortitude and fear in the thought of Miguel García-Baró shows what can be defined as the “active” side of patience and allows us to recognise its role as a keystone in the capacity to critically interpret current reality.

Stefano Santasilia is Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades of the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí (México). His lines of research are: phenomenology and hermeneutics of the religious phenomenon, phenomenology and hermeneutics of corporeity and space, philosophy of interculturality and peace. He is the author of three monographs (‘Tra Metafisica e Storia. L’idea dell’uomo in Eduardo Nicol’, Florence, 2010; ‘Simbolo e corpo. A partire da Eduardo Nicol’, Naples, 2013; ‘Introduzione alla filosofia latinoamericana’, Milan, 2017) and of various papers published in national and international journals.

[online 09/11/20]