Fear and crisis together form the combination that best describes our current condition: they feed off each other and determine how individuals and communities act, consuming the space available for public debate and swallowing up all other issues. The blend thus generated confers an indistinct, shapeless unity on the complex of human relations, stopping us from understanding them. This makes it particularly useful to investigate the synallagmaticity between the two terms. While on the one hand this analysis cannot fail to confirm the end of a model, the philosophy of law paradigm of modernity, on the other it may enable us to delve into it to unearth the conceptual tools that have not yet exhausted their disciplinary potential and that can still be used to a purpose. One of these is the reference to fraternity that has been set aside too hastily, but which may actually be capable of forging the bond between stakeholders on which a shared ethos could be built.
Keywords: Fear - Distrust - Crisis - Governance - Democracy