Between Ethics and Sociology There's Utopia. Responsibility as a Basis of Zygmunt Bauman's Sociology

In this article I propose a view of Zygmunt Bauman's social thought from the perspective of his reflections on morality. I believe that they give us a key to understanding his writings, being the philosophical ground of his point of view. They not only influence the way Bauman sees nowadays social reality, but also his manner of thinking about the future. I read Bauman in the context of philosophy of responsibility, focusing my narration on the shift from so called micro-ethics (ethics of "small-scale") to macro-ethics (ethics of "large-scale"). I explain why Bauman finds the ways of solving this problem proposed by Richard Rorty and Hans Jonas unsatisfactory by presenting and interpreting his solution in the light of his ideas regarding utopia.