In Celan's Words A Jew Is "a

In The Last Thirty Years We Have Gained Enormous Amount Of Freedom (everywhere, Except Perhaps In Places Like Burma Or North Korea), But We Lost Quite A Large Amount Of Security. Because Of All Sorts Of Reasons, Because Of Globalization Which Stripped The Nation State Of A Large Part Of Its Sovereignty Away, Because Of The Dismantling Of The So-called Welfare State. As A Result, People Feel Simultaneously Much Freer And Much More Insecure.

For One To Be Free There Must Be At Least Two. Freedom Signifies A Social Relation, An Asymmetry Of Social Conditions: Essentially It Implies Social Difference--it Presumes And Implies The Presence Of Social Division. Some Can Be Free Only In So Far As There Is A Form Of Dependence They Can Aspire To Escape.

Questioning The Ostensibly Unquestionable Premises Of Our Way Of Life Is Arguably The Most Urgent Of Services We Owe Our Fellow Humans And Ourselves.

The Woe Of Mortality Makes Humans God-like. It Is Because We Know That We Must Die That We Are So Busy Making Life. It Is Because We Are Aware Of Mortality That We Preserve The Past And Create The Future. Mortality Is Ours Without Asking--but Immortality Is Something We Must Build Ourselves. Immortality Is Not A Mere Absence Of Death; It Is Defiance And Denial Of Death. It Is 'meaningful' Only Because There Is Death, That Implacable Reality Which Is To Be Defied.

It Is So True That In Liquid Modernity Freedom Was, So To Speak, Let Off The Leash, And For A Quite A Number Of Years The Freedom Of Choice Was "in Principle" Unlimited. One Result Was The Weakening Of Inter-human Bonds, Particularly Inherited Bonds, And The Counterfactual Assumption That Individuals Must And Can Fend For Themselves.