Temporary Blended: Why Ethics of Stasis Still Matters

Abstract

The etymon στάσις goes back to the Greek word ἵστημι, which means “to stay”: this ancient Greek verb denotes presence, spatiality, permanence. In these pages, stasis is the perfect word to describe the unusual dimension built all around us by the advent of the Covid pandemic during the lockdown months in our nation. Our daily movements and activities were stopped, we were forced to stay at home as a form of social distancing, or there were those who had the obligation to remain enclosed in healthcare facilities. This paper will describe three hermeneutic figures for the stasis, using suggestions that literature, visual arts and philosophy have been offering for centuries: the night, the threshold and distance. They all converge to define the outlines of an ethics that should be reaffirmed in the present, as little pieces of a mosaic brought to light.