Liberal Individualism and Public Health: Case Study of Coronavirus Pandemic in Gandhian Duties’ Context

Abstract

Human civilization and the development process of humanity seems to have gone wrong, is the real reflection of the coronavirus pandemic. An enemy visible only with electron microscopy has stated clearly about skewed development devoid of morality content, which tantamount to breaking the laws of nature, and is unsustainable for human existence in the absence of remoralization and responsibilization initiatives. The ‘virus-crisis’ has proven to be insurmountable for free-market capitalist-consumerists’ rights-based models, and also, the state-controlled socialist, paternalistic, and welfarist one-size-fits-all society has failed to find answers to the colossal loss of lives and properties. Gandhian deontological prescription of individual-centric development pillared on duties (dharm) of satya, ahimsa, brahmacharya, aparigrah, abhaya leading to sarvodaya and swaraj in real sense suddenly finds more takers. The Kantian categorical imperative of self-legislation for self-development coincides. These libertarian thinkers focused on ‘moral man’ who is a product of amalgamation of autonomy, freedom, and morality. Such moral normative prescription for public health crises entails: (1) human health infirmities are best fought with a state of well-being which is a summation of physical, mental, and social health and resulting wholesome immunity, (2) sanitation and hygiene measures are meant to care for self, surrounding, and nature as a much-needed arsenal keeping the pathogens away, (3) collective strength or herd immunity gets the upper hand as the necessary ingredient for population health and safety. This chapter examines the possibility of making the public health system robust with distributive healthcare justice and a health ecosystem governed by cosmopolitan conceptions of liberal moral individualism sans consequentialism.