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The Terrorism of Reason in the Thought of Zygmunt Bauman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

David Torevell
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This article is concerned with the social theory of Zygmunt Bauman. It will highlight recurring themes within his writing with particular reference to three of his works, Legislators and Interpreters, Modernity and Ambivalence, and Mortality, Immortality and other Life Strategies. It will trace his argument that Modernity constituted a process of gradual de-animation of Nature and disenchantment of the world, a condition that post-modernity aims to reverse. It will discuss his contention about the catastrophic effects of the strategies of instrumental Reason and Modernity’s relentless urge to design and order the whole of human existence. It will demonstrate some of the awful consequences of such strategies. The tension between human attempts to structure the world and its self-defeating failures to do so, becomes the central motif in Bauman’s work: a tension witnessed most visibly in the on-going confrontation between Reason and ambiguity.

Bauman learned the limitations of structuralism from Levi-Strauss. What fascinated him was the Modem urge to structure everything, the constant attempt to find the social structure, the underlying structure of everything; that ambivalence could be eliminated.

Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 76 , Issue 891 , March 1995 , pp. 141 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Z., Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters. (Polity Press, 1987)Google Scholar Modernity and Ambivalence. (Polity Press, 1991). Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies. (Polity Press. 1992)Google Scholar.

2 Bauman, Z. Modernity and Ambivalence. Op. cit. See The Introduction: The Quest for Order, pp. 1–17.

3 ibid. p. 2.

4 ibid. p. 3.

5 ibid. p. 7.

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15 Bauman, Z. Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies. Op. cit. p. 113.

16 ibid. p. 8.

17 ibid. p. 15.

18 ibid. p. 17.

19 ibid. p. 18.

20 ibid. pp. 22–23.

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22 ibid. p. 38.

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26 ibid. p. 91.

27 ibid. p. 92.

28 ibid. p. 92.

29 Interpreters and Legislators. Op. cit. p. 52.

30 ibid. See Ch.4.

31 ibid. p. 63.

32 ibid. p. 65. quoting Delves. A. 'Popular Recreations and Social Conflict in Derby 1800–1850., in Yeo, E & S. Popular Culture and Class Conflict 1590–1914: Explorations in the History of Labour and Leisure. (Harvester. 1981) pp. 90–95.

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40 ibid. See ‘The loneliness of terror’, pp. 48–50.

41 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modem World. Ch. 10. in Flannery, A. ed. Vatican Council II. (Dublin. 1975).

42 ibid. Ch. 10.

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44 ibid. p. 29.

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46 ibid. p. 10.

47 ibid. p. 112.

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49 ibid. p. 48.

50 ibid. p. 49.

51 ibid. p. 50

52 ibid. p. 42.

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