by Nils Baratella
A paradigmatic keyword in the current fight against the pandemic is the biopolitical terminus technicus of "social distancing". Distance is thus cited as a strategy that is intended to reshape the social "fabric of reference" (Hannah Arendt) to reduce infection. But how is the concept of distance to be understood and what are the consequences of this reorganisation?
Distance is a popular and widely used metaphor. While the term originally referred to the distance between two points, today it is often used for distance relationships in which there is also a relationship between two spatially separate entities. In most cases, the distance only becomes clear, recognisable and understandable in its entirety. For Hans Blumenberg, the concept of distance is so important for the formation of human culture that he can base his (phenomenological) anthropology entirely on the distance metaphor. He explains the cognitive and cultural achievements of the "distance being" human from its erection in the steppe, from the growing visibility in the double sense of being able to see further, as well as being seen. In addition, people are "eccentrically positioned" (Helmuth Plessner), they are aware of being seen and must integrate this image that others have of them into their self-image. The concept of distance thus leads to the political context of our relationship to others and to ourselves. We understand ourselves "with different eyes". This enables us to gather experiences across distances and to pass on what we have seen. To do this, we need the distance of protected spaces. "The children of the cave," says Blumenberg, "who were never able to assert the right of the strongest and that of the hunting breadwinner, invented the mechanism of compensation. They did not secure life, but learnt to give it everything that would make it worth living."
Distance is therefore not just spatial distancing, but rather the mode in which we establish cognitive relationships with our objects. We not only sense the world, we see it, we form concepts, create symbols and exchange ideas about them. To do this, we need a distance from which we can recognise what we would no longer understand if it came too close to us. Distance and understanding belong together, because only distance allows us to understand the object or the other person as something separate from us. The act of separation - the distancing - thus becomes a prerequisite for possible references. Does this have ethical implications?
If we follow the premise of recognition theory that it is the difference that allows us to face each other as free and equal, yet always as separate individuals, then distance is the prerequisite for us being able to be independent and yet together with others as others; that we can be individuals and not just part of a group, however defined. At the same time, however, this also allows us to develop a "sense of community" that allows us to make judgements that are not just affective reactions, but that we develop on the basis of a way of thinking that explicitly includes and weighs up perspectives other than our own. "Only because I can speak to others," writes Hannah Arendt, "can I also speak to myself, i.e. think." We can only do this if we simultaneously distinguish ourselves from one another and recognise ourselves as different. Only on this basis can we show solidarity with each other, but this also demands responsibility - not only the responsibility to stand up for our own actions, but also the responsibility to take care of the foundations of a shared world in which we can recognise each other's autonomy. We can and must take responsibility for each other because of the distance we create from each other in order to encounter each other as independent individuals. In the words of Emmanuel Lévinas: "The more I respond, the more responsible I am; the closer I get to the neighbour for whom I have to care, the further away I find myself."
These optimistic interpretations rely on the (cultural) anthropological necessity of distance and at the same time hope to anchor it in the voluntary nature of civic self-understanding. As is so often the case, however, there is an optimistic and a pessimistic use of metaphors that are intended to describe a fundamental, human relationship to the world, to make quasi-anthropological statements. So what happens when distance is not voluntarily maintained but enforced? In her observations on the functioning of totalitarian rule, Hannah Arendt described it as a decisive characteristic that these are not explicitly characterised by the fact that they would negate freedom (because tyrannies do that too), but by the fact that they lead to widespread "abandonment". Only here does man become wolf of man. Here, individuals can no longer recognise each other, they can only be a functioning or superfluous part of a mass. This mass excludes all those who are defined as enemies or who are declared superfluous. What counts is the movement of the whole, to which everyone who can and is allowed to do so must submit. The individual is thus completely absorbed into the masses and delegates himself, his decisions, his actions and thus also any assumption of responsibility to the collective. Arendt sees the clearest consequences of totalitarian rule at the level of the structure of consciousness in this abandonment of responsibility, in the refusal to consider or take into account the consequences of one's own actions for others, in the refusal to think. For Arendt, this shows the "outrageous stupidity" that totalitarian rule demands of individuals and at the same time causes in them.
The fact that the current social distancing measures have something to do with totalitarianism is, however, preferred by those who are currently demonstrating against them. They see social distancing regulations as a restriction on freedom of movement, and the subordination of the right to demonstrate to the Infection Protection Act as a restriction on freedom of speech. It is doubtful whether this already fulfils the criteria for totalitarian rule. The analogies to Arendt's descriptions seem to lie elsewhere. For in the rejection of further distancing regulations, the need to be allowed to be a mass again is increasingly apparent. And for Arendt, being a mass means the supposed freedom of no longer having to take responsibility. So does the freedom that is being demanded and demonstrated here, which would hardly be possible under totalitarian rule, perhaps consist more in no longer having to bear the impositions of distance? To no longer want to endure the contradictions that must also make up scientific processes? Is the freedom demanded the freedom from having to consider the consequences of one's own actions? What remains under the conditions of such freedom? The masses, who no longer know any distance to the inside, but only boundaries to the outside. And "outrageous stupidity".
Nils Baratella, Dr phil., is a research assistant at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Oldenburg. Contact: