“…then I had a kid. And nothing, not even a doctorate in philosophy, prepared me for the physical and existential dread I would feel when tasked with protecting this fragile, new creature.”
January 14, 2021
Philosopher and existential scholar Danielle LaSusa describes the visceral awareness of life’s fragility triggered by the birth of her daughter. Her account reminds us that existentialism is hardly a dry, sterile, cerebral philosophy. Rather, it puts us face to face with fears and realities that we might wish to keep cerebral—but that, if we’re honest, we can’t. The COVID-19 pandemic only makes these facts more immediate and more clamorous.
“Death Was a Theory, Until I Became a Mother,” by Danielle LaSusa, New York Times