ABSTRACT
The philosophy of viruses and pandemics is often conceived of as an ethics of self-isolation and of the human effects of social isolation, as well as its community breeches. Such a philosophy may also be seen as an ethics of care for those infected, a duty of treatment. The philosophical significance of pestilence and plague in human society, its religious interpretation as God’s wrath and a spiritual punishment, its symbolic representation and political ‘emergency’ uses clarify the meaning of human being, of self-isolation, of suspicion of the other, and whether there is indeed meaning outside human communities. The post-apocalyptic novel in modern literature that focuses on contagion and the pandemic is also the basis of zombie dystopian themes that have gripped postmodern novels, movies, TV and popular media. The figure of the zombie heightens a cultural anxiety of loss with the mysterious outbreak of a highly infectious plague that transforms people into the living dead.
