Postmodern social theory and modern moral philosophy

Abstract

In the opening passages of A Short History of Ethics, Alasdair MacIntyre remarks that ‘moral philosophy is often written as if the history of the subject were only of secondary and incidental importance’. According to MacIntyre, the philosophical point of grappling with the history of moral philosophy lies in recognising its fundamental historicity; that is, in recognising and dealing with the fact that ‘moral concepts are embodied in and are partially constitutive of forms of social life’. In this paper I explore this thesis via a critical reconstruction of the social-theoretical cum ethical writings of the Polish-born critical theorist Zygmunt Bauman. More specifically, I develop a critical reconstruction of Bauman's guiding contentions that: a) attendant to the project of nation building, Western modernity gives rise to a historically determinate and historically specific form of moral discourse; b) the moral framework characteristic of Western modernity has been rendered problematic by the social, cultural and political developments associated with the ‘postmodern condition;’ and, c) in light of these developments, the demands of the day require a renewal of ethical thinking, if we are not to succumb to the contemporary dangers of atomisation, and the never-ending imperatives of hedonistic individualism and egocentric self-fulfilment.