Zygmunt Bauman on why we care about the world

Things could be better

The social theorist Zygmunt Bauman, best known for inventing the idea of “liquid modernity,” left Poland as a dissident in 1968, and three years later became a professor of sociology at Leeds University, and eventually one of the most influential thinkers of the last fifty years. His insight comes from a newspaper article, which did not give the source.

Why do I write books? Why do I think? Why should I be passionate? Because things could be different, they could be made better. [My role] is to alert people to the dangers, to do something.

“Don't ever console yourself that you have done everything you could, because it's not true,” says the philosopher Levinas, who believed that you recognised a moral person as someone who does not think he or she is moral enough. That is also how we recognise a just society — a just society castigates itself that there is not enough justice in our society.

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