Le decisioni “difficili”. Esempi dall’emergenza pandemica

Abstract

The decision on the right thing to do in the concrete circumstances of life, the “deliberate choice” of which Aristotle spoke, can become “difficult” for different reasons, which often overlap: the inadequacy of the information base, which is the cause of a specific form of vulnerability; the conflict between duties and principles; problems of incommensurability and incomparability; conditioning or real forms of constraint that reduce the space of options actually available to individuals or push them to do what they would never have chosen if they had truly been “free” to choose. The Covid-19 pandemic has offered illustrative examples of how these difficulties arise both for decisions that individuals make for themselves and for those that affect an entire community.