The discussion about Corona by Herbert Boettcher

The discussion about Corona by Herbert Böttcher [This article published in early May 2020 is translated from the German on the Internet, EXIT! Krise und Kritik der Warengesellschaft.] Since our first text on Corona in the crisis of capitalism, some of the fears expressed have already been confirmed. The discussion has continued. New facets are coming to the fore. Some of them are worthy of the following remarks: In the debate on Corona, Bundestag President Schäuble warns against giving absolute priority to the "protection of life" over other goods1. This cannot be contradicted from a 'heaven of principles' in which supposedly timeless truths are turned back and forth. And so those who are professionally and vocationally entrusted with supra-temporal truths and familiar figures such as philosophers and theologians have also hastened to agree with Schäuble. In their insistence on general truths, they are all more or less heirs of Kant's ethics. His ethics are based on a purely formal principle: acting out of free will. He is free because he is not bound to any other principle than that of reason and in this he acquires that general validity that is expressed in the categorical imperative. The duties arising from the pure form of the categorical imperative, however, are unfortunately duties that must be fulfilled in the earthly world. They cannot remain 'pure form', but must be connected with material contents, with contents from the sensual-empirical world. Thus, in Kantian terms, a power of judgement is required that subordinates and subordinates the particular of the empirical-sensual world to the general, that is, to the general truths from the timeless heaven of principles. It is precisely at this point that it becomes clear that the heaven of principles is by no means as timelessly innocent as it may appear at first glance. In the appearance of universally valid truths, that which in historical reality represents the universally binding law of reason, the law of value and the sexual separation associated with it, appears in a highly earthly manner. The historical form of the value-splitting society has always been assumed without reflection when it comes to the ethical weighing up of goods that are in competition with each other. This insight sheds light on the darkness of enlightened ethics and its reasoning about which of the contingent goods deserve to be given preference. Then Schäuble's sensational statement that there can be no absolute in the realm of contingency - not even the good of life - proves to be as self-evident as it is banal. It becomes problematic, however, because it aims at the crisis of capitalism, which has been further intensified by Corona. Politicians seem to want to protect the lives of their own citizens from Corona with a huge national debt. It is precisely this that shows that the life of the capitalist general public is dependent on the production of goods and the fulfillment of the tasks associated with the reproduction of life. The motor of exploitation as well as the motor of reproduction must therefore be restarted as quickly as possible if capitalism is not to