Biopolitics and Public Health Ethics under Pandemic / 中国医学伦理学

ABSTRACT

In The history of Sexuality, Foucault described the bipolar form of biopower that appeared in modern West the disciplining power for the individual body and the "biopolitics" targeted the population, and used it to analyze the pandemic that appeared in Europe in the 17th century. By associating Foucault’s biopower with authoritarianism, Agamben created a new version of biopolitics, used it to understand the COVID-19 in Italy, and pointed out that it was the state sovereignty manipulating individual life under "exceptional conditions" to create "naked life". Facing the pandemic, Agamben’s biopolitics obviously cannot explain the rationality of public health interventions. Foucault avoided this problem to some extent, while his liberal biopolitics under the framework of liberalism may still lead to violence against pandemic victim and animal. In view of the limitations of biopolitics in understanding the pandemic, this paper turned the perspective to public health ethics, and tried to think about the coordination between individual and collective interests on the basis of the common good.