The plague as a moral precariousness and violence: a dialogue between Camus and Byung-Chul Han

Abstract

This paper offers an examination of the correspondence between moral decadence and hostile behavior. With this purpose, the analysis advances through the ethical dispute that takes place in The Plague by Albert Camus and through the unveiling of a contemporary violence that dresses under the guise of a pressing self-affirmation, an uncovering that Byung-Chul Han carried out in his Topology of Violence. The call that both authors make about the disposition of the human soul that is capable of confirming this dark connection or emancipating us from it, becomes a responsibility to which consciousness has to respond.