Abstract

Why has the global West (North America, Europe) handled the covid-19 pandemic and the corresponding economic crisis so much worse than the global East (East Asia)? The crises demonstrate the degree to which the West is shaped by its forms of competition and the East by its forms of cooperation. In the West, we have become habitualised to American neoliberalism over the last two generations. In the East, varieties of neo-Confucianism and neo-Buddhism have been transformed into national cultures. The way humans understand their position in the world intellectually and react to crises according to corresponding habit makes an effective difference. The present comparison between global East and West makes use of Hannah Arendt’s conception of politics and the shared world as well as of Helmuth Plessner’s conception of mediated immediacy in forms of modern biopower. The pandemic is a catalyst within the decline of the West and the rise of the East.