Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

254 MARTIN MCKEEVER
es his vision is none other than the history of Western culture
and the history of salvation. From within these intertwined histories
the Pope believes it is possible to arrive at a metaphysics
of goodness which can provide the necessary objectivity and
foundations for a contemporary morality.
It we compare Bauman’s narrative with this one, a number
of factors emerge which help us understand why his vision of
morality is so different from that of Fides et ratio. One of the
most obvious of these is the comparative brevity of Bauman’s
narrative. At times he writes as if ethics, and indeed the world in
general, began with modernity. There is scant reference to the
centuries of moral reflection which precede the Enlightenment.
A second characteristic of his narrative is the manner in
which it divides history into epochs, most particularly those of
modernity and postmodernity. Like many postmodernist authors,
Bauman’s thought is defined in terms of what he wishes
to reject, that is to say modernity. He does not explicitly suggest
that in 1789, or 1871, or 1918, or 1945, or 1968 the world, or
even the “western world”, suddenly stopped being modern and
became postmodern. While avoiding such a preposterously
crude idea, he does nonetheless suggest that we have moved into
a new form of culture called postmodernity, without ever explaining
what has happened to modernity, not to mention those
forms of culture which existed before modernity. The primary
problem here is not simply the vague chronological and thematic
parameters but the reduction of history to a succession of
epochs, which does not do justice to the complex relationship
between past and present. Finally, we may note in passing the
stridently “secular” nature of Bauman’s narrative. As John Milbank
6 has argued so forcefully, the option of narrating history in
terms of secular reason is not a neutral, self-evident and “objective”
choice, but is itself a form of rationality which will shape
and often predetermine the course of one’s narrative.
As regards the first tenet, therefore, there is a limited convergence
between Bauman and John Paul II on the excesses of
5 MILBANK, J. Theology and Social Theory, Beyond Secular Reason. (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers, 1990).