Moral, rules, and (moral) responsibility: Bauman’s understanding of ethics

This paper analyzes Zygmunt Bauman?s understanding of ethics and morality, focusing on the role of rules and moral responsibility in modern and postmodern epochs. Starting from Kantian deontological ethics, Bauman develops a critique of the rationalistic and normative assumptions that dominate modern conceptions of ethics. Bauman presents postmodern morality as a phenomenon grounded not in universal laws but in the pre-social, immediate responsibility of the individual toward the other agent. The concept of ambivalence plays a crucial role in Bauman?s thought, reflecting the impossibility of fully normatively encompassing moral situations. The paper discusses Bauman?s rejection of Durkheimian understandings of morality and his critique of rationalism, utilitarianism, and the drive toward the universalization of moral norms. The author shows how Bauman views morality as a personal, irrational, and irreducible obligation - finally, the paper points to the potential weaknesses of Bauman?s conception of morality.