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Individual And Politics In The Thought Of Zygmunt Bauman

Posted on:2007-09-29Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:T H GuoFull Text:PDF
GTID:1116360212484736Subject:Political Theory
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This dissertation, on the methodology of George H. Sabine's paradigm of Historicism, at the perspective of the changing situation of individual's lives, and from the both dimensions of normal and experimental study, does an understanding and analysis to the thought of Zygmunt Bauman, the famous contemporary western thinker. Meanwhile, It surrounds closely the close relationship between the individual and politics on the ideal and realistic dimensions, and tries to give a reply to an important issue whether a break of the history appears in the social and political transition of the contemporary Europe.We begin with the explanation and analysis to the methodology in the Bauman's thought, and through the understanding of the way and specialty and value of individual's existence, from which we can see that it is the interdependent relationship between individuals and society that proves to be an individualization logic in the process of western civilization. On the base of such microanalysis, we can reveal the complex origins in Bauman's thought, in which such thinkers as Gramsci, Simmel and Arendt are the key in his turn to the Other philosophy of Levinas. On the ground of the latter, Bauman argues that individual's moral responsibility does not originate from but is controlled by the society, and draws an actively Utopian picture with his individual ethics, the primitive field of which is the ethics of a responsibility to the Other. However, the individual ethics has its transcendental limits, and only by the politics as a public life does it maintain and continue. So the individual and the politics have their inner relativity in the meaning of ethics.However, After the Enlightenment, the goal of modern western society and politics is how to design a more perfect, certain and permanent order at the expense of totally destroying individual's moral responsibility and values. We use the way of power rhetoric to discover the power relation, rationalism and its outcome (moral degeneration) in the process of civilization. Under the support of co-existence between knowledge and power, and with the certain tricks of violence legitimation, the minority of elites designs a powerful system of surveillance. And the nation-state, whose main body is the rational bureaucracy, is the most efficient structure in modern politics which is the product of power united knowledge, executing the discipline and punish to the Other, so the majority of population in modern society is objectified, even inhumanized to be the objects of the holocaust. However, the pursuance ofmodern order is not always successful for the stranger in symbol of the ambivalence always destroys and subverts its certainty.After 1970s and 1980s, the capital has expanded in the scale of global freely and caused the disintegration of antagonism between both Camps, the consequences of which is that the global capital gains the extraterritoriality. Under the hit of the capitalist globalization, the structures and the functions of nation-state, although being the solidest fence of the modern orders, emerge to be collapsed, such as the separation between state and nation, state and sovereignty, state and welfare. Accordingly, the collapse of nation-state causes the model of the social control and the situation of individuals' lives to change greatly, too. The individual being oppressed comes to be re-emancipated from the 'cage' of the modern orders, and tries to achieve their individualization by different means. However, this individualization, being lured and dominated by the aspiration of consumption, has no certainty or safety. Therefore, the individual looks forward to the warm and stable communities at the time of attaining the freedom and individuality. At the same time, the poor, repelled from the consumer society, lose the individual ethics and values they should have. So, the individualization, as the respond of the globalization, sinks in the both difficult positions, and a structural crisis appears in the individualized society.Bauman urges that, if the crises in the individualized society need to be removed and the individual's worries about the uncertainty need to be relieved, it is the fundamental channel that the principles, nature and goals of politics are reinvented completely. The reason is that, after the nation-state are in disfavor, the function and goal of politics get the opportunity to be rebuilt, and with the human welfare in the global space as its ultimate solicitude, with the moral responsibility and the justice as its principles, politics can operate on the three levels: the global politics, the new-tribal politics and the citizenship.Finally, Bauman, this dissertation gains a conclusion that, is not the supporter of the postmodern but constantly and ambivalently cares for the Europe, and from the changing situation of individual's lives he goes into the profound influences of the global change. Furthermore, through the research into the thought of Bauman, we can get a verdict that the present age of globalization is in a new transition of western history, that is, the old institution frame, behavior fashions and thinking ways with the nation-state as the popular identity units are more and more difficult to continue, but the new identity and model of the organization and structure has never appeared. Thisverdict of the history transition can get further confirmed by comparison with the social theories of Giddens and Beck. And from this, perhaps more importantly for our political researches, the political researchers should apply the knowledges of history and theories, develop their political imagination, timely reflect and rebuild the dual relationships of the experience and the norm between the individual and the politics in the age of globalization.
Keywords/Search Tags:Thought of Bauman, Individual, Politics, Globalization, Individualization
PDF Full Text Request
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