After Lévinas
Assessing Zygmunt Bauman’s ‘ethical turn
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2398044 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Benjamin Adam Hirst (University of Leeds, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 184-198 |
| Publication date | 2014-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of Social Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1368-4310 • E-ISSN: 1461-7137 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1368431013516056 |
| OpenAlex | W2140960269 |
| Language | FR |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 38 |
The centrality of Lévinasian ethics to Zygmunt Bauman's sociological vision has been affirmed by a number of writers. However, the way in which Bauman attempts to think through the implications of this ethical framework for political decision-making on a global scale has been seen as highly problematic. In recent years, Bauman has arguably begun to veer towards what can be seen as a more 'legislative' position, prioritizing what Lévinas calls archic issues relating to government, foundation and sovereignty, and arguably jettisoning his earlier commitment to socialism as the 'active utopia'. It is the aim of this article to track this move in Bauman's thought, first of all locating structural continuities between his earliest English-language books written during the 1970s with those of the 1990s. It is shown that while much of the same terminology is carried over into his 1990s work, Bauman moves away from affirming the dynamics of human history and the almost ontological necessity of utopia, towards a sociologically suspect individual moral impulse which exists outside distinct social and historical formations. The sheer enthusiasm with which Bauman took hold of this idea had the result of completely frustrating the movement back to social formations. As such, it is argued that as Bauman moved towards theorizing the individual in 'liquid modernity' or consumer society, he developed a highly problematic concept of the individual which relies on the sociologically deterministic understandings of the human being which he was attempting to move away from before and during his engagement with Lévinas
Epistemology · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · Utopia · Employment and Welfare Studies · Law · Philosophy · Zygmunt Bauman's Sociology
Reflections on violence
The problem of order
The ritual process
Totality and Infinity
Durkheim’s society revisited
Moral Blindness
Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers
The Politics of Crowds
Reconsidering Difference
Intimations of Postmodernity
Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas
Times of interregnum
Postmodern Ethics
The Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman
The Social Thought of Zygmunt Bauman
Socialism
Modernity and the holocaust
Five Problems in Levinas’s View of Politics and the Sketch of a Solution to them
Durkheim, Morality and Modernity
The Faith of the Faithless
Paths in Zygmunt Bauman's Social Thought
Durkheim, Mathiez, and the French Revolution
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
Freedom and consumerism
The Ritual Process
Towards a Critical Sociology
Optimism and agency in the sociology of Zygmunt Bauman
Modernity and Ambivalence
A Plea for Leninist Intolerance
Zygmunt Bauman's poisoned gift of morality
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,67 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2024 (8) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |