Nature and Pandemic Elementa Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives 1 (2021) 1-2 Pierpaolo Limone Editorial 7 First Section Slavoj Žižek The Vagaries of the Superego 13 Ricardo Espinoza Lolas Nature and Pandemic 33 Paolo Ponzio Mask and Otherness between Recognition and Concealment: 47 Notes on the Self and the You Daniela Savino “Liquid” Identity and Otherness in the Phenomenon 61 of Religious Alienation: The Loss of Critical Thinking and the “Barter” of the Self in the System of Communion Francesca R. Recchia Luciani The Sexistential Vulnerability of Bodies in Contact 85 in the Philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 5 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives Second Section Martina Rossi Universal Design for Learning and Inclusive Teaching: 103 Future Perspectives Marco Ceccarelli A Historical Account on Italian Mechanism Models 115 Giusi Antonia Toto - Alessia Scarinci Cyberfeminism: A Relationship between Cyberspace, 135 Technology, and the Internet Luigi Traetta - Federica Doronzo Super-Ego after Freud: A Lesson not to Be Forgotten 153 Federica Doronzo - Gianvito Calabrese Functioning of Declarative Memory: Intersection 163 between Neuropsychology and Mathematics Giuliana Nardacchione - Guendalina Peconio Peer Tutoring and Scaffolding Principle for Inclusive Teaching 181 Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 6 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 33 Nature and Pandemic Ricardo Espinoza Lolas Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (Chile) doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elem-2021-0102-espi ricardo.espinoza@pucv.cl Abstract The article shows how the Covid-19 pandemic is not only a matter associated with nature, but it is an essential topic in order to understand humanity today, because at the beginning of the pandemic it was immediately shown that nature was behind this disaster, because it was, in a certain way, taking revenge on the humans. After all, the very conception of nature that we use today is a human conception, created from the subjectivity of the Self, that goes hand in hand with the modern creation of the nation-state. Nature, nation-state, etc., are creations of the Self and in this way nature is understood as something objective, but at the same time the human subject treats himself as an object. Here lies the very problem, because neither the Self nor the nature behave in an objective way, but both moments are made visible from a dynamic articulation of the movement of one in the other. This vision was part of the conception of the ancient Greeks and by Nietzsche and other current thinkers such as Žižek. Keywords: Greece; nature; Nietzsche; objective; pandemic. Introduction: “Nature” since the pandemic What is behind what is designated as “Nature” from the Labyrinth of Modernity in Europe? What is behind, in these days of quarantines and confinements in different regions of the planet, when you talk about a virus or water or climate or the countryside or the sea or the mountains? Did the invention of the modern European “I” need a concept of “Nature” as a tension moment for its own constitution? Why is “Nature” seen as some- thing “good” (minus, obviously, the SARS CoV-2 virus), and the human as toxic? Why does everyone flee the cities to take refuge in “Nature”? Why be https://www.ledonline.it/elementa https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elem-2021-0102-espi Ricardo Espinoza Lolas Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 34 able to touch our pets, such as dogs, and not our loved ones because they are human and infect us? Why does Capitalism today dress up and change from patriarchal to “matriarchal”, that is, to a “maternal” capitalism of care and soft loans for the good of countries, companies and humans? Why is “Nature” understood as feminine, as an ancient pagan goddess or, for Latin American Catholic believers, as the Virgin Mary, a Great Mother? Why this “Pachamama” fashion, which for many South Americans expresses “Nature”? Why is Capitalism dressed now, in a new mutation, as a maternal goddess who takes care of us for our good? And if we ironically and see that there is a before Covid-19 and surely there will be one after that pandemic, as there has been with every pandemic throughout history: “Spanish” flu, cholera, bubonic plague, etc. we realize that we are stranded in BC-19/AD-19 or, simply put, before the Pandemic / after the Pandemic (aP/dP). I cannot stop thinking about that dialectical moment, to call it somehow, in which we are, in the types of “deniers” and also of “idolaters” of the virus. What is interesting is what they “lie or think” about Nature. And it does not matter if they are athe- ists or believers, scientists or philosophers, rationalists or delusional, sane or crazy, learned or ignorant, etc.; what I see is almost always a kind of somewhat naive dialectic between the human and the natural. Between two moments of the same, but apparently not recognized as such. The “Nature”, by some and others, is understood as something alien to the human and in itself “good” and/or finished in and by itself. Said in a more academic and rational tone: as if the concept of “Nature” agrees with itself. And everything blurred, defective, hazardous, contingent, precarious, unfinished, or simply wrong would fall on the side of the human. It is a scandal that in the XXI century we continue to maintain this perspective and even more so in the middle of the pandemic. What I want to investi- gate in this article are two ideas that are present around “Nature” that are opposed to the general vision. Simply put: • The human is naturally natural. The human being is a type of animal, among other higher primates, that formally constitutes its own nonspe- cific “hole”. It is a hole in which the human animal feeling is structured. Human feeling is a very open stimulus feeling, next to that of other animals, and it is this openness that we call “intelligence”. Xavier Zubiri is very blunt and tells us that “Man is the hyper-formalized animal” (Zubiri, 1998, p. 29). An animal materially open to itself; that character of “hyper” is what lies that radical “hole” of our animality (Espinoza, 2017). Intelligence operates in that structural opening of our animality. • It is the natural that is itself open and unfinished. This is the bottom line. Nature is labyrinthine in its own design and totally open to chance. https://www.ledonline.it/elementa Nature and Pandemic Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 35 Therefore, nature is never something finished, nor clear, nor different, nor closed, nor systemic. Nature is neither mechanical, nor organic, nor teleological, nor feminine, nor divine, nor mythical; or anything at all. Nietzsche is brilliant and was very clear as early as 1882 about the problem of understanding nature in this way, not even mechanistic scientists succeed. In section & 373 “‘Science’ as prejudice” of La gaya Ciencia, the philosopher is totally resounding and very current: The same thing happens with that belief with which so many materialistic researchers of nature are now satisfied, the belief in a world that must have its equivalent and its measure in human concepts of value, the belief in a “world of the truth” which could be definitively accessed with our square and small human reason – What? Do we really want to degrade existence in this way to an exercise of calculus servants and to being locked in a cabinet for mathematicians? Above all, one should not want to strip it of its poly- semic character: good taste demands it, my lords, the taste of respect for everything that goes beyond your horizon! That only an interpretation of the world in which you have legitimacy is legitimate, in which it can be investi- gated and continue to work in a scientific way in your sense (– Do you really mean mechanistically?). A sense that admits counting, calculating, weighing, seeing and touching and nothing else, is rude and naive, assuming it is not a disease of the spirit, an idiot. (Nietzsche, 2014, pp. 887-888) Nature is “less than nothing”, as Zizek would say following the old Greek materialists (like Democritus). It is precisely the recognition of that elusive nature of nature, of the multiplicities of meaning suggested by the processes involved with it (natural laws, morals, romantic dreams, passions, art, mathematical laws, viruses, etc.) that leads to Žižek to declare that nature is “less than nothing”. Hence the potentiality of an empty notion that is beyond good and bad, of everything ethical, aesthetic, spiritual, individual, social and historical; even beyond the mechanical, the calculation and the algorithm. And it is “beyond”, because I repeat, it is “less than nothing”. This is an introduction. 1. The question about “Nature” The old and “romantic” question “idealized” by “Nature” in times of the Covid-19 pandemic, with so many documentaries, films and news daily, all online, seems a really valid and necessary question. The nature associ- ated with the four seasons and our childhood is remembered, as something unique and that it left us, that it will not return. The “romantic” ques- tion about “Nature” goes hand in hand with a certain melancholy, namely, https://www.ledonline.it/elementa Ricardo Espinoza Lolas Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 36 as Freud would say, a “mourning” for what is gone (Freud, 1993). And this for a reason that connects us with what is most typical of 20th and 21st century thinking; with that thought about the earth as Gaia that has appeared very strongly and that has its roots in German Romanticism, English Empiricism, Italian Renaissance, Amerindian Environmentalism, American and European Complexity Sciences, planetary citizen move- ments, anti-capitalist ideology, Greenpeace, Heideggerianism, naturists, vegans, old eastern texts and practices, orientalized Westerners, ancient Greeks, ecologists, Jakob von Uexküll’s multiple disciples, ecosophers. It is a thought that we find in many longing radical clusters of gods who are lost in the Labyrinth of Modernity, in that tremendous European human creation that has been the “I”. And all this today is updated and returns with the pandemic in a more sloppy and politically correct way. The reason is what I see now in many places (especially in academic circles and, also, in communication media and, needless to say, in the squares of many parts of the planet where deniers are against government measures to stop the pandemic): the discussion about how “Nature” that is good, true and beau- tiful, is destroyed by the abominable “man”. It is often said that “the virus came to put things in their place; for the pride of man will be punished by ‘wise Natur’”. Stated ironically, it is fundamentally a patriarchal logic that in what is called innocently and naively “Nature” means something of its own that can be shaped by the human, something that is at the service of the human. I explain. That dual logic that separates the human into man and woman is a patriarchal logic, the same one that separates nature from man. In this patriarchal logic of the modern European self, this patriarchal duality acts in a reduplicative patriarchal way: the human as a man who abuses women, and, in turn, as an abuser of “Nature”. Man is understood as an abuser of “Nature”; even as a “rapist” of her (that human-man who has destroyed “Nature”, especially in the last 50 years and has destroyed her due to that phallic character of sovereign domination). The Catalan philosopher Laura Llevadot explains it very correctly: In all its metaphysical polarities (essence / appearance, culture / nature, man / animal, life / death, logos / writing, or masculine / feminine…), the difference does not indicate the opposition, as the very idea of ‘sexual’ dif- ference that is hoisted itself wanted to do. It is, on the contrary, the first term of the opposition the one that needs to affirm its identity to rank and differentiate itself from what could contaminate it and, therefore, put its dominance in question. (Llevadot, 2020, pp. 100-101) Today it is necessary to overcome this metaphysical duality, which always brings a complex and ideological trap, because an essential differential rela- tionship is used as an “in itself ”, as something fixed, and, furthermore, https://www.ledonline.it/elementa Nature and Pandemic Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 37 one of the terms is always anchored to another. In this perspective, I listen to speeches all day, from environmentalists to scientists, talking about how the good “Nature” is deforesting, drying up, intoxicating because the human-man does not do what he should do, that is, “take care of it”. We are today more than ever immersed in the logics of care; this logic is perfect for the new capitalism that was born in the pandemic (the “matriarchal” capitalism that wants to put aside the cold patriarchal capitalism in the face of human anguish, fear and insecurity). Capitalism is transforming the concept of “Nature” to get out of the crisis: That capitalism, not only as a “father”, but now as a “great mother” come to “save us” from all that pain and destruction. It is what has been seen today in 2020. Capitalism itself mutates into being “our Mother” who protects us, takes care of us and returns us to some “normality” symbolic and “created and invented” for the “children”. Capitalism mutates and from being a brutal patriarchy it becomes a generous mother who “loves” us. And so, she becomes more powerful (A). (Espinoza, 2021) And if man cares for “Nature” (man as “shepherd of being” paraphrasing Heidegger), “Nature” will also take care of him. It is like a perfect capi- talist economic transaction for the creation of added value, efficient and utilitarian: we should take care of “Nature” because she will take care of us all! and thus we will be able to continue generating and producing capital, values and successes in the midst of Capitalism. The “Nature” will take care of the human-man (and by default the human-feminine). Ultimately, she will take care of him. It is a matter of thinking about all the advertisements that are in the middle of the banking pandemic, the stock market, etc., advertisements where we are told that everything will change for the better because they are there to help us in times of crisis 1. What I don’t like about this circular logic is almost everything, but I can summarize it in a double moment. On the one hand, that “familiar” game that exists between “Nature” and man. This patriarchal logic of the heterosexual marriage of Mrs. “Nature” with Mr. Man is unacceptable and no longer gives more of himself. In addition, he returns to that relationship with the chant that she is passive and he is active. In Greek texts, like Hesiod’s Theogony, it is quite clear that the Earth is active-passive; a passive essential femininity cannot be applied to the Earth goddess: “To chaos” comes from the verb chaskein and lies open her mouth wide. Chaos in the initial sense does not imply something substantive, and less divine, but the open itself 1 Véase, por ejemplo, este anuncio del Banco Santander: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=4COuWi0E5P0. https://www.ledonline.it/elementa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4COuWi0E5P0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4COuWi0E5P0 Ricardo Espinoza Lolas Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 38 that makes it possible for the “‘Earth’ ‘to give itself ’ to Heaven” (Gigon, 2000). Chaos is like an abstract initiality that expresses that fissure, that opening, that exit that starts the theogonic system itself so that the “Earth” is whatever it is, “gives of itself ” everything. The passive “Earth” has nothing, it is phallic, it is active power, it gives of itself to “Heaven” itself so that it covers it and they can carry out sexual intercourse and this is prior to any sexual difference of an ontological and ideological nature (Espinoza, n.d.). And now, in this new modern European logic, “Nature” must be cared for by man, a “bad” man who brings hidden intentions of domina- tion. This is very unserious. And, on the other hand, there is in that ideo- logical discourse (inverted patriarchal logic) another factor that I cannot accept either. The idea that there are some “beautiful souls” among men who do know how to take care of “Nature”; and these are, in particular, the active and brave ecological voluntarists, accompanied by the profound scientists of algorithms and the profound philosophers of concepts (as in a science fiction film, Soderbergh’s Contagion, 2011 or Nolan’s Interstellar, 2014). They are the ones who really know how to take care of that sick “Nature”; and they also know how to be able to give back to “Nature” it’s real and true status: it will be the great cosmic lady (divine) who “is there” to support us as mother-matter in our active lives (this is the serious error of the essentialist feminism); because we are connected to it by a certain “umbilical cord” (as well as in the ancient Greek myth of Anteo son of Gaia or the film Avatar by Cameron, 2009). 2. Not to the “objective” But the most wrong thing about this approach is something that some philosophers know very well, such as Hegel in his Phenomenology of the Spirit, Nietzsche in Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, Heidegger in Sein und Zeit, Zubiri in Inteligencia sentiente, Deleuze in Logique du sens, Zizek in The sublime object of ideology, etc.; and I refer to the typical repetitive epistemo- logical and, therefore, ontological (and maliciously: “ideological”) tale, of the modern rationalist European horizon of problem analysis. It is a very superb horizon that never wants to step aside, that always comes back again and again with another face (it is like Hegel’s “bad infinity” or Schopenhauer’s “eternal return” which is the one Nietzsche attacks); there is always the “mantra” that you want to impose on everyone’s “common sense”; the sense most constructed by the ideology of the day that is in sover- eign power. For it is from this horizon, absolutely modern and European, where nature remains as “the objective” and the human-man as “the subjec- https://www.ledonline.it/elementa Nature and Pandemic Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 39 tive”. And, furthermore, one hangs on the other, one as lord and the other as servant; and without any reconciliation, only domination and injury. The self not only creates the need for “Nature”, but also the structuring of the nation-state, and of capitalism as the very motor of the entire system of the self. And here also the ways in which this can be understood do not matter (there are several ways throughout the centuries) (Espinoza, 2018). The interesting thing is to highlight the very duality in which this type of analysis is placed from this logic: man on the one hand and “Nature” on the other; the subjective and the objective were born and there is no way to eliminate them. Everything that was possible then becomes necessary, as Hegel wisely sees it as early as 1830 in his Lessons on the Philosophy of history: “That which at first seemed only accidental and fortuitous, thanks to repetition becomes something real and confirmed” (Hegel, 1970, p. 338). (This is the text that Marx paraphrases in Louis Bonaparte’s The 18th Brumaire.) And so, there is no way to de-structure it from the system. And in this one does not see or, what is worse, does not want to see the obvious, that the human is by himself and nature. It is something that many thinkers throughout history point out, to name just two, apparently very different: Nietzsche and Zubiri. What would an unnatural human be? What happened to the Europeans with the human to formally “remove” it from nature, leave it without the land of it; expel him from paradise? A human who is not human? Zizek shows how capitalism works with its operation of extraction of the essential: “Our consumerism is organized like this: we want sex, but for sure; beer, but without alcohol; coffee, but without caffeine; chocolate, fat free. We want to play safely” (Žižek, 2015). A human himself without humus? Is it possible for a piece of earth, an earthling, that does not realize that its meaning is to be a sense of the earth? Immanence and nothing but immanence we are as humans; Earth humans. Deep down in this extraction of the human, capitalist ideology is also operating since its modern beginnings (Espinoza, 2019). In this game of marking “Nature” and man as two moments that are related, it is clear that the dominant ideology operates in which one of the terms is above the other; and operates as the first analogous: the man who has told us the ideology that we are in the image and likeness of God, but apparently not of an immanent god, but transcendent (what would that be?), is the one who cares for the earth, the one who is mandated to take care of it or, conversely, is the one who constantly stains it. It is like a total dual character, of radical bipolarity in which the human moves; almost like a villainous Batman character: like a Joker. Then, the human, as man with “Nature”, performs multiple functions: he is the one who protects it, the one who saves it, the one who redeems it, the one who gives it its light, its https://www.ledonline.it/elementa Ricardo Espinoza Lolas Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 40 meaning, its concept and its purpose. It is the one that reduces it, experi- ences it, ritualizes it, historicizes it, narrates it, metaphorizes it, represents it, deconstructs it, signifies it, capitalizes it, measures it, murders it, produces it, cultivates it, educates it, apprehends it, it ideologizes it, the subjective one, it spiritualizes it, exorcises it, wants it, loves it, deifies it, expresses it, makes it audible, makes it visible, imagines it, remembers it, explores it, seduces it, outrages it, uses it, manipulates it, etc., etc. In short, the human as a man has become a delirious madman with the female “Nature”: he loves her and destroys her at the same time. “However, he moves”; that is, nature is not “there” in front of us, neither in a categorical way, nor in an empirical way, but neither in an ontological way. Nature is nothing that “is there” with respect to man, in any respect. And this, among other things, because man is not “there” for nature either, it is not what is subjective about her, nor is nature what is objective about him. This logic prevents us from seeing what nature is, supposing that it is “something”, because perhaps it is not even a “something”; it is “less than nothing”. 3. And if “Nature” is an immediate expression of the “Nation-State” So, if nature is not opposed to human and human is not opposed to nature: what is nature? From the outset, you do not have to write it in capital letters or even in quotation marks. For now, if there is no opposi- tion between the two terms, these terms will fall by their own weight, since each one depended on the other. As Nietzsche emphatically says: “We have eliminated the true world: what world has remained? Is it the apparent one?... No! By eliminating the true world, we have also eliminated the apparent world” (Nietzsche, 2000a, p. 52). Not only does “Nature” have to step aside and, as Hegel would say, it must “commit suicide”: “Nature’s destiny (Ziel) – it says there – is to kill itself (sich selbst zu töten)”  2, rather, man himself must die in order to be reborn, as Nietzsche says over and over again at the end of his sane life. If the dual metaphysics “Nature and man” ceases to be what it is, then why ask about “Nature”? Why not ask for the “Man”? Ah, but let’s not forget “this one” also fell and it is essential that it should fall; somehow you have to de-construct and de-sediment the modern European self, in that Heidegger is right, but his solution is obviously not (it is not an extreme environmentalism either; to live in and by “Nature”). That self is part of 2 Enz., § 376, Zusatz (W. 9, 538). https://www.ledonline.it/elementa Nature and Pandemic Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 41 the very problem of everything that happens to us today. Better not to ask about either of the two, and even less about the metaphysical articulation “Nature-man”. So, what can we ask, reflect, criticize? It is interesting to note that the term “Nature” always expresses a “birth” from Latin, even in the device that Europeans invented, the State, to which the adjective “nation” is attached. The State is itself a “nation-state”, a State in which those who are born in it give it their identity; and, therefore, its borders and limits, both inward and outward. The invention of “Nature” was not enough, it was also necessary to invent the “Nation-State” for the “I” to rule as its lord (and without forgetting that the “Heaven of God” had to be invented, where we are going or we are not going to stop depending on our actions in life, and the “Unconscious”, the place par excellence where we are governed without our realizing it). The nation-state is one of the best gadgets, together with capitalism (they go hand in hand) that Euro- peans have invented to be able to dominate sovereignly whatever it is: now empirical territories, now virtual territories, and unconscious territories. It is a logic of war and domination. The State in its “Nature” (“Nation”) is like a great totalitarian monster, in the style of Leviathan; it is the War Machine par excellence that has been invented to hegemonize the planet and tame it for a few. With the pandemic it has become clear that the only one that has won is capitalism; this is worthy of analysis for feminists, Lacanian psychoanalysts and critical materialist theorists (not for Honneth and his current Frankfurt School which always plays for European social democracy and therefore to keep everything the same: Gatopardism!). What if nature had nothing to do with a certain constitutive identity birth of “inside and outside”? That is, of the metaphysical logics of the patri- archal rational European ideology built from the self. The Greeks of the Mysteries, of the Cult, of the Tragedy, of Heraclitus, etc. they were forging their words, their myths from the experience in which they were immersed, in the same polis. Therefore, for them, as for the Amerindians, Orientals, etc., it has never been about “Nature” and, consequently, not about “man” either. What is it about? of something as simple as the Dionysian. 4. A nature with a small letter for human, simply human The Greek physis so important not only for philosophers (this is another modern rationalist and patriarchal European deformation), but for the ancient Greeks, it expresses something other than nature, at least to this one that we have made visible in this text. Nietzsche spoke of the “Diony- sian vision of the world” to better understand the Greeks in his masterpiece https://www.ledonline.it/elementa Ricardo Espinoza Lolas Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 42 Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik and Zubiri, always more formal, of the “horizon of movement” in Los problemas fundamentales de la metafísicos occidental. That Greek, which is hidden in the figure of the god, expresses the dance of the god; and a dance that in turn is the very tension of everything human, things and gods. This dance is life-death tension (joy-silence, birth-death), that is why the god expresses himself in the masks and, in the Tragedy, they are his heroes: Antigone, Hippolytus, Oedipus, Agamemnon, Medea, etc. (but the mask was also present in the cult and in different parts of the polis). The great thinker philologist Walter Otto in his beautiful book Dionysus tells us many features of the god, for example: “[…] the infernal roar that announces and accompanies the god reveals the phantasmagoric nature of him, especially because of what he suddenly leads to: a silence mortal” (Otto, 2000, p. 105). That tension in dance is what allows to configure what there is (Apollo), namely, the polis itself, without holding onto any transcendent plane. Without any support, everything starts to move dynamically and returns again and again; and the polis is recreates and realizes and forges a destiny. In all this we already see what is understood by nature and human in the Greeks. In the Dionysian, something like move- ment is expressed, but where we do not have a motive (as something in and of itself ), nor a beginning or an end (as an absolute origin and end), it is like a movement in movement, itself, with partial starts and closings, self- contained; as well as “waves in the sea”. Physis expressed movement with dynamic density within itself; with internal material tissue, never nothing, because on the Greek horizon there is no space for any Creatio ex nihilo, typical of the Semitic horizon that pierces Europe. And that “creation” is behind modern metaphysics, its theology, its science, its technique, its war, its city, its capitalism, its nation-state, its “Nature”, deep down, behind that “I” that rises from nothing in the image and likeness of the Semitic God. Theological metaphysical nothingness is always a condition of possibility, the limit from where everything starts to move. On the other hand, in the Greeks, this material fabric in the move- ment itself gives of itself the different modes of things, from the simplest to the most complex; they are different forms of tissue with their different consistency planes (Espinoza, 2020b). It is a dynamic fabric that organ- izes itself in material densities, in precise and random material patterns. Behold: things, plants, animals, humans, cities, gods, to call them somehow. Nature is either “less than nothing” or it is simply another “Monster” of the Labyrinth of modernity; and it has to be “less than nothing” because it cannot respond to anything that has to do with nothing, that is, with the metaphysical-theological characteristic of medieval and modern Europe. https://www.ledonline.it/elementa Nature and Pandemic Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 43 Zizek is very clear in his voluminous book dedicated to Hegel Less than nothing: Nature is not a conglomeration of dispersed phenomena, but a connected whole. Afterwards, this Whole is not immobile, but in a state of constant change and movement. Afterwards, this change is not only a quantitative gradual increase, but also implies qualitative jumps and breaks. Finally, this qualitative development is not a question of harmonious unfolding, but rather it is propelled by the struggle of opposites. (Zizek, 2015, p. 63) Only from the theological metaphysical plane does the self “happen” and as an addition it is necessary to postulate that “Nature”, that nation-state, that Capitalism, that Unconscious, and so on. In nature as “less than nothing”, like that wise “void” of the atomists like Democritus, we are in a thought in which it is not shown in the verb “to happen”, but in the “to arise”, “to emerge”, “to be”, “dance” of things to each other so that the jovial sense emerges as a whole: already from the polis, already from the gods (and thus democracy was born in Greece and never in any Semitic people). Zizek is very clear and shows us that nothingness is a condition of possibility of modern metaphysics, but the emptiness of the materialists that is “less than nothing”, in its own fleeting materiality, already gives everything in its own materiality: “The distinc- tion between nothing and emptiness. Nothing is localized, as when we say ‘there is nothing here’, while emptiness is a dimension without limits” (Zizek, 2015, pp. 61-62). In nature we are cast to the fate of materiality in its representational emptiness that does not allow itself to be trapped by the self in any way; in this is that richness of being “less than nothing”, because by being so, one is in the very fragility of life. And that fragility lies in nature, namely, the very nature of animality, of human animality, of things, and of all those things that we value. That a-signifying fragility, as Deleuze thinks in Thousand Plateaus, lies that nature of which we are parts, nothing more than that. Nature is like a simple “remainder”, Schelling would say, an “immediate” feature always open as Hegel would say, namely, the Dionysian that in its own tension and fleeting fragility allows us a certain always dynamic stability to create, as Nietzsche says in his Zarathustra: “[…] one must still have chaos within oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star” (Nietzsche, 2000b, p. 39). Conclusion That Greek physis gave the polis and its participatory and differential democracy; on the other hand, European “Nature” has given the nation- https://www.ledonline.it/elementa Ricardo Espinoza Lolas Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 44 state and its current totalitarian capitalist democracy (because of the representative and liberal democracy there is also very little left). For the same reason, it is not minor to rethink this issue of democracy, but not because of the “Water Cycle” or because of the Covid-19 pandemic, because the matter is simpler and deep down more radical. Joseph H. Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate in Economics, makes an intelligent critique of Thomas Piketty and his famous book sold by the thousands, Le Capital au XXIe  siècle: “The main question we must ask ourselves today is not about capital in the 21st century, but on democracy in the XXI century” (Stiglitz, 2015, p. 147). Stiglitz is right, because it is not about discussing what capital will be or what it is in our century and from there giving multiple solutions to generate a more just, reliable and transparent society, but what it is about is democracy. It is necessary to rethink how we want to organize ourselves. It is about rethinking society politically so that then we can talk about how capital is distributed and produced in a more dignified way for all. Therefore, what I want to express in this text is that obviously we have a serious problem with our planet that is expressed, for example, in its climate change, but the solution is not to discuss the “Water Cycle”, but how we organize ourselves politically in order to be able to “dissolve capitalism”. A capitalism that ultimately we are ourselves: we are the capitalists of the self who are destroying the planet because in advance we destroy ourselves (from scientists to philosophers, from believers to atheists, from right to left, from rich to poor, from the from North to South, from wise to ignorant, from poets to politicians, from citizens to zombies, from men to women, from gods to demons). In that destruction is the basis of the current pandemic. And it is that we do not even know how to feed ourselves. This is well pointed out by Chris- tian Drosten, the German Government’s scientific advisor for the whole pandemic issue: Coronaviruses try to change host organism when the opportunity presents itself. Through our use of animals, contrary to the principles of nature, we create that opportunity. Farm animals are in contact with wild animals. The way they are stored in large groups amplifies the spread of the virus between them. The human being comes into intense contact with these animals, for example, through the consumption of meat. That represents a possible tra- jectory of coronavirus outbreaks. And it is clear that we always try to do business and generate efficiency and high capitalization even in what we eat (Espinoza, 2020a). Hence that simple and fragile nature of itself to a miserable virus, which as such is nothing or almost nothing, and simply being almost nothing has already caused so much pain to millions of humans on this global capitalist planet. https://www.ledonline.it/elementa Nature and Pandemic Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 45 Only with a possible dissolution of capitalism is it possible that we can, with the multiple knowledge and practices, open a planet together so that We are viable in the best way. It is that “NosOtros” (We/Others), which is no longer mere “us” (because that is capitalized and is based on the self ), which is called to re-politicize the very plane of immanence in which we are dynamically fabric socio-historical, visionary and virtual. References Espinoza, R. (2017). Noología y técnica en Zubiri. Ideas y Valores, 66(163), 243- 260. Espinoza, R. (2018). Capitalismo y empresa. Hacia una revolución del nosotros. Libros Pascal Editores. Espinoza, R. (2019). NosOtros. Manual para disolver el Capitalismo. Ediciones Morata. Espinoza, R. (2020a). Pandemia, capitalismo e ideología. En D. Tomás Cámara, Covidosofía. Paidós Ibérica. Espinoza, R. (2020b). Diónysos, el dios queer. Eidos, 34, 292-321. Espinoza, R. (2021 - En prensa). Epílogo. ¿Para qué psicoanalistas en tiempos de Pandemia?. En N. Barria-Asenjo, Construcción de una nueva normalidad. Notas de un Chile pandémico. Psimática Editorial. Espinoza, R., Fernández, J. E., & Toscano, A. (2020). Hegel hoy. Una filosofía para los tiempos del Otro. Herder Editorial. Freud, S. (1993). Obras completas, Tomo XIV. Amorrortu Editores. Gigon, O. (2000). Los orígenes de la filosofía griega. Gredos. Gutiérrez Recabarren, M. B. (2021). Reseña de libro C. Balbontín & R. Salas (Eds.), Evadir. La filosofía piensa la revuelta de octubre, 2019. Santiago de Chile: Libros del amanecer, 2020. Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso, 17. Hegel, G. (1970). Filosofía de la historia (póstuma, apuntes de lecciones recopila- das por 1ª vez en 1837). Trad. de J. M. Quintana. Ediciones Zeus. Llevadot, L. (2020). Jacques Derrida. Democracia y soberanía. Gedisa. Nietzsche, F. (2000a). Crepúsculo de los ídolos. Trad. de A. Sánchez Pascual. Alianza. Nietzsche, F. (2000b). Así habló Zaratustra. Alianza Editorial. Nietzsche, F. (2014). La gaya ciencia. En F. Nietzsche, Obras completas, Vol.  III: Obras de madurez I. Tecnos. Otto, W. (2000). Dioniso. Siruela - Herder. Pérez, A. E. (2021). Reseña de libro L. Llevadot, Jacques Derrida. Democracia y soberanía. Barcelona: Gedisa, 2020. Enrahonar: An International Journal of Theoretical and Practical Reason, 66, 222-224. Stiglitz, J. E. (2015). La gran brecha. Qué hacer con las sociedades desiguales. Taurus. https://www.ledonline.it/elementa Ricardo Espinoza Lolas Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 46 Žižek, S. (2015). Menos que nada. Hegel y la sombra del materialismo dialéctico, Vol. 83. Ediciones Akal. Zubiri, X. (1998). Sobre el hombre. Alianza Editorial. Websites ABC (November 17, 2014). Interview with S. Žižek by I. M. Rodrigo https://www.abc.es/cultura/cultural/20141117/abci-entrevista-slavoj-zizek- 201411171214.html The Guardian (April 28, 2020). Interview with C. Drosten, Director of Virology at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, German Government Advisor https://www.eldiario.es/theguardian/Christian-Drosten-principal-coronavirus- hundiendo_0_1021548406.html Riassunto L’articolo dimostra come la pandemia di Covid-19 non sia solo una questione associata alla natura, ma sia un tema essenziale per comprendere l’umanità oggi, perché la pan- demia ha mostrato fin da subito come dietro questo disastro ci fosse la natura e come essa stessa, in un certo senso, si stesse vendicando dell’umanità. Del resto la stessa concezione della natura che usiamo oggi è, in fondo, una concezione creata dell’umano, dalla sog- gettività dell’io, che va di pari passo con l’altra creazione moderna, quella dello Stato- Nazione. La natura, lo Stato-Nazione e altri concetti simili, sono creazioni dell’io: in questi concetti, la natura è intesa come qualcosa di oggettivo, ma al contempo il soggetto umano tratta sé stesso come un oggetto. Questo è il vero problema, perché né l’io, né la natura si comportano in modo oggettivo ma entrambi i momenti sono resi visibili da una articolazione dinamica del movimento dell’uno nell’altro. Questa visione fu presente sia nel pensiero degli antichi greci che in quello di Nietzsche, fino a quello di altri pensatori contemporanei come Žižek. Copyright (©) 2021 Ricardo Espinoza Lolas Editorial format and graphical layout: copyright (©) LED Edizioni Universitarie This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. How to cite this paper: Espinoza Lolas, R. (2021). Nature and pandemic. Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives, 1(1-2), 33-46. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/ elem-2021-0102-espi https://www.ledonline.it/elementa https://www.eldiario.es/theguardian/Christian-Drosten-principal-coronavirus-hundiendo_0_1021548406.h https://www.eldiario.es/theguardian/Christian-Drosten-principal-coronavirus-hundiendo_0_1021548406.h https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elem-2021-0102-espi https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elem-2021-0102-espi Elementa_1-2021-1-2_00b_Sommario.pdf Editorial Pierpaolo Limone First Section The Vagaries of the Superego Slavoj Žižek Nature and Pandemic Ricardo Espinoza Lolas Mask and Otherness between Recognition and Concealment: Notes on the Self and the You Paolo Ponzio “Liquid” Identity and Otherness in the Phenomenon of Religious Alienation: The Loss of Critical Thinking and the “Barter” of the Self in the System of Communion Daniela Savino The Sexistential Vulnerability of Bodies in Contact in the Philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy Francesca R. Recchia Luciani Second Section Universal Design for Learning and Inclusive Teaching: Future Perspectives Martina Rossi A Historical Account on Italian Mechanism Models Marco Ceccarelli Cyberfeminism: A Relationship between Cyberspace, Technology, and the Internet Giusi Antonia Toto 1 - Alessia Scarinci 2 Super-Ego after Freud: A Lesson not to Be Forgotten Luigi Traetta 1 - Federica Doronzo 2 Functioning of Declarative Memory: Intersection between Neuropsychology and Mathematics Federica Doronzo 1 - Gianvito Calabrese 2 Peer Tutoring and Scaffolding Principle for Inclusive Teaching Giuliana Nardacchione - Guendalina Peconio