Zygmunt Bauman (1925) is a Polish sociologist and philosopher. Professor at Warsaw University until he was expelled from university during the anti-Semitic purge of 1968, he emigrated to Israel and taught at universities in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Subsequently he was invited to chair the Social Sciences Department at Leeds University in the UK. His books include "Europe - an Unfinished Adventure”, “Liquid Modernity”, “Liquid Life”, “Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers?”.
TINA is a brilliant method of clearing one’s conscience. And
also an excellent prophylactic: if applied conscientiously, the conscience will
not get a chance to discover it got soiled - saysZygmunt Bauman in the second instalment of extracts from his new book Life in
Contexts: Conversations on What We Left Behind and What Lies Ahead, published
in Poland.
The post-Holocaust world has promoted preventative wars. As demonstrated by the Iraq
experience, the world is willing to unleash genocidal passions in the name of
preventing presumed genocide, saysZygmunt Bauman in an extract from his book
Life in Contexts: Conversations About What We Left Behind and What Lies Ahead.
We Europeans - dozens of religious creeds, languages and
traditions of happiness - have learnt how to live alongside the Stranger and
how to negotiate our neighbourly relations, saysZygmunt Bauman. Let us share
this knowledge with people in the rest of the world.