The Corona Crisis as a Test of National Habitus: The Imperative of Obedience

Abstract

The Coronavirus pandemic has caused many human tragedies, and this will be the primary basis on which its consequences will be debated. Not only out of respect for human suffering, without the consideration of which law is but an inhumane cutting edge of abstract formal normativity. But also because of the effect that human suffering and human tragedy – or, in most cases, the threat thereof – has on people’s thoughts, words and actions. From the socio-legal point of view, the Corona crisis has triggered a wave of phenomena about whose exact weight we will long be pondering, and the gravity of which cannot be doubted.