Modernita a holocaust

Bauman understands the Holocaust as a “Jewish tragedy” but emphasizes its specific features that distinguish it from all other genocides. He notes that the Holocaust emerged and was implemented in our modern, rationalized and rationalistic society, at a high level of development of our civilization and at the peak of the achievements of human culture – which is precisely why it represents a problem for this society, this civilization, and this culture. The Holocaust is thus understood not as a “mere” historical event, but as a historical milestone, as a testimony to the nature and character of our civilization, to the degeneration of human rationality and to what ends it was used. Bauman’s book places the Holocaust in the context of sociological analyses of racism but transcends them by demonstrating the tragic dialectic of the Holocaust’s “exceptionalism and normality.” Without moralizing, the author demonstrates how Enlightenment rationalism came into sharp conflict with morality in the mid-20th century and found no way out. The bibliography of Zygmunt Bauman’s work comprises several dozen monographs, but it is his 1989 book Modernity and the Holocaust that is considered by the public (not only academics) and by the author himself to be a ground-breaking work: with this book he became a world-renowned sociologist and an authority on the analysis of the late modern period. The book was awarded the 1990 Amalfi Prize for the best European sociological work of the year. It has been translated into dozens of languages. Zygmunt Bauman wrote a special introduction for the Czech edition.