Bauman, Zygmunt - Modernity and Holocaust

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t h e p r i n c iple of rational explanation as such. S t i l l less did a undermine the

practice of sociological reductionism. From that point of view. Durkheim's divergence from established interpretive practice repre seined no more than J family disagreement. What appealed to be an expression of

radical dissent boiled down, after a l l . to the shifting of emphasis from the

individual to unia/ needs, or. rather, to one supreme need, now assigned priority over all other needs, whether predicated on individuals or on groups: the need of social integration. Any moral system is destined to serve the continuous existence, and the preservation of the identity, ot the society which supports i t s binding tone through socialization and punitive sanctions. 1 he persistence ot society is attained and sustained by the imposition of constraints upon natural i a- social, pre-sociab predilections of society members: by forcing them 10 act in a way that does not contradict the need to maintain sot ietal unity.

[f anything, Durkheim's revision had rendered sociological reasoning about morality more circular than ever. If the only existential foundation of morality is the will of society, and its only function is to allow the society to survive, then the very issue of substantive evaluation of specific moral systems is effectively removed from the sociological agenda Indeed, with social integration recognized as the only frame of reference w i t h m which the evaluation t a n be performed, there is no way in which various moral systems can be compared ami differentially evaluated.. The need each system serves arises inside the societv m which it is nested, and what matters is that there must be a moral system in every society, and not the substance of moral norms this or that societv happens to enforce in order to maintain i t s unity. En gtQS, Durkheim would say, each society has a morality it needs. And the need of the society being the only substance of morality, all moral systems are equal in the sole respect in which they can be legitimately - objectively, scientifically - measured and evaluated: their u t i l i t y for the satisfaction ot that need.

But there was more to Durkheim s treatment of morality than a most forceful re-affirmation of the long-established view of moral norms as social products. Perhaps the most formidable of Durkheim s influences on social-scientific practice was the conception ot societv as. essentially an actively moralizing force, Man is a moral being only because he lives in society Morality, in a l l its forms, is never met w i t h except in socieu the individual submits to society and this submission is the condition ot I n s liberation. For mans freedom consists in deliverance from blind..

pre-social state, or a failure to depart from it. It is always connected with some resistance to social pressures, or at least to the right' social pressures (the concept which in the light of Durkheim's theoretical scheme can be only interpreted as identical with the social norm, that is with the prevailing standards, with the average). Morality being a social product, resistance to standards promoted by society as behavioural norms must lead to the incidence of immoral action.

This theory of morality concedes the right of society (of any society, to be sure; or, in a more liberal interpretation, of every social collectivity, not necessarily of the 'global-societal' size, but capable of supporting its joint conscience by a network of effective sanctions) to impose its own substantive version of moral behaviour; and concurs with the practice in which social authority claims the monopoly of moral judgement. It tacitly accepts the theoretical illegitimacy of all judgements that are not grounded in the exercise of such monopoly; so that for all practical intents and purposes moral behaviour becomes synonymous with social conformity and obedience to the norms observed by the majority.

The challenge of the Holocaust

The circular reasoning prompted by virtual identification of morality with social discipline makes the daily practice of sociology well-nigh immune to the 'paradigm crisis'. There are few occasions, if any, when the application of the extant paradigm may cause embarassment. Programmatic relativism built into this vision of morality provides the ultimate safety valve in case the observed norms do arouse intinctive moral revulsion. It therefore takes events of exceptional dramatic power to shatter the grip of the dominant paradigm and to start a feverish search for alternative groundings of ethical principles. Even so, the necessity of such a search is viewed with suspicion, and efforts are made to narrate the dramatic experience in a form that would allow its accommodation within the old scheme; this is normally achieved either by presenting the events as truly unique, and hence not quite relevant to the general theory of morality (as distinct from the history of morality - much like the fall of giant meteorites would not necessitate the reconstruction of evolutionary theory), or by dissolving it in a wider and familiar category of unsavoury, yet regular and normal by-products or limitations of the morality-producing system. If neither of the two expedients measures up to the magnitude of the events, a third escape

as a set of rules rather than norms (much less as inner propulsion); rules that are naturally resented, as they reveal other humans as a hostile externality of human condition, as a constraint upon freedom.

There is, however, a third description of the existential condition of being with others' - one that may provide a starting point for a truly different and original sociological approach to morality, able to disclose and articulate such aspects of modern society as the orthodox approaches leave invisible. Emmanuel Levinas,7 responsible for this description, encapsulates its guiding idea in a quotation from Dostoyevsky: 'We are all responsible for all and for all men before all, and I more than all the others.'

To Levinas, being with others', that most primary and irremovable attribute of human existence, means first and foremost responsibility. 'Since the other looks at me, I am responsible for him, without even having taken on responsibilities in his regard.' My responsibility is the one and only form in which the other exists for me; it is the mode of his presence, of his proximity:

the Other is not simply close to me in space, or close like a parent, but he approaches me essentially insofar as I feel myself - insofar as I am - responsible for him. It is a structure that in nowise resembles the intentional relation which in knowledge attaches us to the object - to no matter what object, be it a human object. Proximity does not revert to this intentionality; in particular it does not revert to the fact that the Other is known to me.

Most emphatically, my responsibility is unconditional. It does not depend on prior knowledge of the qualities of its object; it precedes such knowledge. It does not depend on an interested intention stretched towards the object; it precedes such intention. Neither knowledge nor intention make for the proximity of the other, for the specifically human mode of togetherness; 'The tie with the Other is knotted only as responsibility'; and this moreover,

whether accepted or refused, whether knowing or not knowing how to assume it, whether able or unable to do something concrete for the Other. To say: me void. To do something for the Other. To give. To be human spirit, that's it ... I analyze the inter-human relationship as if, in proximity with the Other - beyond the image I myself make of the other man - his face, the expressive of the

Other (and the whole human body is in this sense more or less face) were what ordains me to serve him ... The face orders and ordains me. Its signification is an order signified. To be precise, if the face signifies an order in my regard, this is not in the manner in which an ordinary sign signifies its signified; this order is the very signifyingness of the face.

Indeed, according to Levinas, responsibility is the essential, primary and fundamental structure of subjectivity. Responsibility which means responsibility for the Other', and hence a responsibility 'for what is not my deed, or for what does not even matter to me'. This existential responsibility, the only meaning of subjectivity, of being a subject, has nothing to do with contractual obligation. It has nothing in common either with my calculation of reciprocal benefit. It does not need a sound or idle expectation of reciprocity, of 'mutuality of intentions', of the other rewarding my responsibility with his own. I am not assuming my responsibility on behest of a superior force, be it a moral code sanctioned with the threat of hell or a legal code sanctioned with the threat of prison. Because of what my responsibility is not, I do not bear it as a burden. I become responsible while I constitute myself into a subject. Becoming responsible is the constitution of me as a subject. Hence it is my affair, and mine only. 'Intersubjective relation is a non-symmetrical relation . . . I am responsible for the Other without waiting for reciprocity, were I to die for it. Reciprocity is his affair.'

Responsibility being the existential mode of the human subject, morality is the primary structure of intersubjective relation in its most pristine form, unaffected by any non-moral factors (like interest, calculation of benefit, rational search for optimal solutions, or surrender to coercion). The substance of morality being a duty towards the other (as distinct from an obligation), and a duty which precedes a l l interestedness - the roots of morality reach well beneath societal arrangements, like structures of domination or culture. Societal processes start when the structure of morality (tantamount to intersubjectivity) is already there. Morality is not a product of society. Morality is something society manipulates - exploits, re-directs, jams.

Obversely, immoral behaviour, a conduct which forsakes or abdicates responsibility for the other, is not an effect of societal malfunctioning. It is therefore the incidence of immoral, rather than moral, behaviour which calls for the investigation of the social administration of intersubjectivity.

184Towards a Sociological Theory of Morp/ity

Social proximity and moral responsibility

Responsibility, this building block of all moral behaviour, arises out of the proximity of the other. Proximity means responsibility, and responsibility is proximity. Discussion of the relative priority of one or the other is admittedly gratuitous, as none is conceivable alone. Defusion of responsibility, and thus the neutralization of the moral urge which follows it, must necessarily involve (is, in fact, synonymous with) replacing proximity with a physical or spiritual separation. The alternative to proximity is social distance. The moral attribute of proximity is responsibility; the moral attribute of social distance is lack of moral relationship, or heterophobia. Responsibility is silenced once proximity is eroded; it may eventually be replaced with resentment once the fellow human subject is transformed into an Other. The process of transformation is one of social separation. It was such a separation which made it possible for thousands to kill, and for millions to watch the murder without protesting. It was the technological and bureaucratic achievement of modern rational society which made such a separation possible.

Hans Mommsen, one of the most distinguished German historians of the Nazi era, has recently summarized the historical significance of the Holocaust and the problems it creates for the self-awareness of modern society:

While Western Civilization has developed the means for unimaginable mass-destruction, the training provided by modern technology and techniques of rationalization has produced a purely technocratic and bureaucratic mentality, exemplified by the group of perpetrators of the Holocaust, whether they committed murder directly themselves or prepared deportation and liquidation at the desks of the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheithauptamt), at the offices of the diplomatic service, or as plenipotentiaries of the Third Reich within the occupied or satellite countries. To this extent the history of the Holocaust seems to be the mene tekel of the modern state.8

Whatever else the Nazi state has achieved, it certainly succeeded in overcoming the most formidable of obstacles to systematic, purposeful non-emotional, cold-blooded murder of people - old and young, mer and women: that animal pity by which a l l normal men are affected ir the presence of physical suffering'." We do not know much about tht

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unthinking physical forces; he achieves this by opposing againsi them the great and intelligent force of society, under whose protection he shelters. By putting himself under the w ing of society, he makes himself also, to a certain extent, dependent upon it But this is a liberating dependence; there is no contradiction in this. These and similar memorable phrases of Durkheim reverberate to this day in sociological practice. All morality comes from society;there is not moral litfe outside society-; society is best understood as a morality-producing plant; society promotes morally regulated behaviour and marginalizes, suppresses or prevents immorality. The alternative to the moral grip of society is not human autonomy, but the rule of animal passions It is because the pre social drives of the human animal are selfish, cruel and threatening that they have to be tamed and subdued if social life is to he sustained lake away social coercion, and humans will relapse into the barbarity from which they had been but precariously lifted by the force of society This deep-seated trust in social arrangements as ennobling, elevating, humanizing factors goes against the grain of Durkheim sown insistence that actions are evil because they are socially prohibited, rather than socially prohibited because they are evil. The cool and sceptical sceptical in Durkheim debunks all pretentious that there is substance in evil other than its rejection by a force powerful enough to make its w i l l into a binding rule. But the warm patriot and devout believer in the superiority and progress of civilized life cannot but feel that what has been rejected is indeed evil, and that the rejection must have been an emancipating and dignifying act.

This feeling chimes in with the self-consciousness of the form of life which, having attained and secured its material superiority, could not but convince itself of the superiority of the rules by whkh it lived. It was, after all. not society as such', an abstract theoretical category, but modern Western society that served .is the pattern tor the moralizing mission. Only from the crusading-proselytizing practice of the specifically modern and Western gardening society could the selfconfidence be derived, which allowed the rule-enforcement to be viewed as the process ot humanization. rather than of suppression ot one fo r m of humanity by another. The same self-confidence allowed the socially unregulated (whether disregarded, unattended to. or not full) sub ordinated) manifestation s of humanity to be cast aside as instances of inhumanity or, at best, as suspect and potentially dangerous. The theoretical vision, in the end, legitimized the sovereignty of society over its members as well as its contenders.