May Leopardi will be able to help us with the coronavirus?

Coronavirus puts in check not only the physical health of thousands of Europeans, but also mental integrity, weakened by fear and isolation. Philosophers tell the different forms of human frailty which, on the one hand discovers its obvious impermanence, and on the other shows the infantilism of those who challenge prohibitions and deny the danger in order not to renounce their daily rituals.

For ages, man has been drawing up survival manuals, because from the beginning he risks the end. The first manual prescribes to be afraid and to take fear seriously, without ignoring or minimizing it. Self-protection is at the forefront and imposes distrust: danger lurks everywhere, the whole world is a threat and everyone treats the world with suspicion, takes refuge in the distance and withdraws into isolation. In the poem "Ginestra" Leopardi speaks of a global human alliance.

It’s possible that the current shaking leaves some changes: greater diffusion of smart working, virtual training and virtual presence. A total alliance of all men against nature. It is desirable that it triggers a reconsideration of obvious assumptions of the collective way of being: the fictitious omnipotence of technology, the obligation of incessant economic growth, the de-regulation as a lifestyle, the systematic deflection of individual responsibility, the illusion certainty that nature will not return its power against man, whatever he does. Lopardi always goes back to dear topics such as "cruel nature" and  "the infinite solitude of man”  in the vast universe.

"Philosophy of myselft is nothing more than the science of cowardice of body and mind, of looking after oneself, seeking one's own comfort in any way, not caring for others, and making fun of virtue and other such larvae and the imagination of men. Nature is a strong magnanimous, fiery, restless, casual like a bad boy, but reason is lazy like a turtle, and cowardly like a hare." United human federation