Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters: Reflections of Political Theory from Antiquity to the Age of Covid

This book examines diseases and disasters from the perspective of social and political theory, exploring the ways in which political leaders, social activists, historians, philosophers, and writers have tried to make sense of the catastrophes that have plagued humankind from Thucydides to the present COVID pandemic. By adopting the perspective of political theory, it sheds light on what these individuals and events can teach us about politics, society, and human nature, as well as the insights and limitations of political theory. Including thinkers such as Thucydides, Sophocles, Augustine, Bacon, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Publius, Bartolomé de las Casas, Jane Addams, Camus, Saramago, Baudrillard, Weber, Schmitt, Voegelin and Agamben, it considers a diverse range of events including the plagues of Byzantium and 14th century Europe, 9/11, the hurricanes of Fukushima, Boxing Day, and New Orleans, and the current COVID pandemic. An examination of past, present, and future diseases and disasters, and the ways in which individuals and societies react to them, this volume will appeal to scholars of politics, sociology, anthropology and philosophy with interests in disaster and the social body.

Lee Trepanier is Professor of Political Science at Samford University, USA. He is the author of Political Symbols in Russian History: Church, State, and the Quest for Order and Justice and Political Science: Concepts, Methods, and Topics, the editor of Eric Voegelin’s Asian Political Thought, and the co-editor of Walk Away: When the Political Left Turns Right and Eric Voegelin Today: Voegelin’s Political Thought in the 21st Century.