Date of Award

Spring 4-29-2024

Document Type

Honors Project

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Classics, Philosophy, and Religion

Department Chair or Program Director

Romero, Joe

First Advisor

Reno, Michael

Major or Concentration

Philosophy

Abstract

In this paper, I investigate the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic through an economic and philosophical lens to try and understand why government aid was removed. Looking at the problem as solely a structural issue, with Jurgen Habermas’ Between Facts and Norms and Douglas North’s Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance guiding my understanding, provides useful insights. Namely, how the informal and formal structures of society interact, and their cyclical nature. However, that perspective does not provide a complete picture. And so, I developed an understanding of ideology to investigate the origins of informal societal structures. To do this I looked at Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, and Slavoj Zizek. This understanding of ideology provided the understanding that ideology works to integrate all aspects of the status quo, the formal and informal structures of society to maintain cogency. This perspective alone also does not provide a complete story, and so to fully understand the movement of society and why we made the choices we did after the COVID-19 pandemic, I incorporated both institutions and ideology. In doing this, it provided the complete story and illuminates that contrary to the statement made by the title of this paper, things did change after the COVID-19 pandemic, just not in the formal realm, and I conclude that to enact that change we need to first make use of the informal changes.

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