Modernity and Ambivalence

Modernity, argues Bauman, promised to bring the kind of clarity and transparency to human life that only reason can offer. This has not happened, and today we no longer believe that it ever will. We are ever more acutely aware of the irredeemable contingency of our existence, choices, identities and life–projects. Bauman goes on to examine why modernity did not deliver its promise. He argues that the answers lie in the promise itself and in the self–defeating nature of all attempts to fulfil it. Our post–modern age, Bauman suggests, is the time for reconciliation with ambivalence, and the time to learn how to live in an incurably ambiguous world.