Salvaging Self in Bauman's Postmodern Ethics

Bauman’s (1993) postmodern ethics signalled an important new direction from the orthodoxy of a Durkheimian ‘society’ realised morality. This article argues that Bauman’s postmodern ethics, built on the Levinasian notion of ‘being for the Other’, misses the particular and embodied aspects of moral sociality and effaces the self in endless responsibility to the Other. Taylor’s (1992) ‘ethics of authenticity’ and Foucault’s ‘care for the self’ are argued to be important in reasserting the self removed from Bauman’s ‘moral saint’.