ON HOSPITALITY (AFTER THE CRISIS)

Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic will affect our lives in many different aspects, of
which the societal changes will be the ones hardest to predict or to alleviate. The focus of
this paper will be on the idea of hospitality which will certainly come into question after
the age of quarantine, social distancing and closed state borders passes. By providing
historical overview and referencing authors such as Immanuel Kant, Jacques Derrida and
Seyla Benhabib, the connection between the ideas of hospitality and cosmopolitanism will be
examined. Consequently, the main aim of the paper will be to ascertain if we can still support
the idea of the law of unconditional hospitality that cosmopolitans endorse, or has our current
situation of global pandemic changed the situation so drastically that the conditional laws of
hospitality are truly the best we can hope for.