Pandemic Times and James Mensch’s Political Philosophy

In this chapter, Marianna Papastephanou explores the significance of James Mensch’s phenomenology in pandemic times and beyond. Some political aspects of this (un)timely significance are broached as follows: first, the “pandemic” in “pandemic times”, its ancient etymology and the recent medicalization of political metaphors and politicization of medicine are discussed. The notion of epoché in its Greek semantic doubleness as “times” and “bracketing” is especially relevant to this first step. Then, the chapter investigates the way that Mensch politicizes the phenomenological epoché via Jan Patočka and how he utilizes some medical metaphorizations of the political sphere. Emblematic of this interesting operation is Mensch’s powerful analysis of Europe’s crises. The chapter concludes with an association of Mensch’s phenomenology of the public space and its untimely character with a study of the political via the notion of (a)pathetics.