The Crisis of Modernity and the Age of Anesthesia, or Life According to Zygmunt Bauman

Abstract

We live in times of a universal rush and a universal inflation. What is most characteristic of our epoch? What else if not this rushing about; this having no time to live and take joy in everyday things; this pursuit of multiple tasks all at once; this constant busyness and lack of time for ourselves, for our favorite books, for our friends, and for those we feel closest to?

Lying is the most contemporary and actual form of evil. The phenomenology of lying. The special variety and sophistication of its forms. The reasons for its special actualization. The philosophy of lying. The rhetorical lie. The lie in art. The lie in forms of seriousness (conjoined with fear, threats, and violence). There still is no form of force (power, government) without the inevitable ingredient of lying. Blindness with respect to meaningful ideal being (whether or not anyone is acquainted with the latter or not). He who is deceived is turned into a thing. This is one of the ways of doing violence to, and objectifying, man.

—Mikhail Bakhtin (from his 1943 Diary)