Jean-François Lyotard Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) was a French theorist known for ushering the concept of postmodernity into the philosophical discourse. He gained international acclaim for his book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979). This volume, as well as other lesser known but equally sophisticated works such as Just Gaming (1979) and The Differend (1983), firmly planted Lyotard in the pantheon of significant and influential continental philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century.

Lyotard was born in France and went to the Sorbonne. His first academic position was in Algeria, and his experiences there helped inform his understanding of the complications of French colonialism. Thereafter, he attained a PhD and taught for nearly twenty years in Vincennes before teaching in the United States at the University of California-Irvine and Emory University, among many other universities.

The key aspect of Lyotard’s work, and the one that made him famous to some and infamous to others, was his identification of a new philosophical perspective that expressed an “incredulity toward metanarratives.” This statement from The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge forcefully questions the explanations that have usually guided and bounded philosophical inquiry since the Enlightenment. Lyotard rejects the assumption in Enlightenment philosophy and science that universal explanations to vexing moral and political problems exist. In Lyotard’s view, the world is too complex and groups of individuals vary too greatly for the simplistic and universalistic arguments to carry the day. Further, Lyotard builds upon Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of language games as a defining element of so-called postmodernity. In this view, varying streams of meaning and competing theories of ethics and of the good life cannot be adequately judged against a single moral code. Instead, Lyotard encourages the use of a multiplicity of perspectives in coming to terms with what constitutes just action.

Lyotard’s views have been subject to much criticism. The first criticism is that his position is relativistic and, therefore, one society cannot judge another’s behavior to be unjust. This angers supporters of absolute conceptions of justice, such as proponents of the work of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. This critique is not without merit as Lyotard does use the rationality of the Enlightenment in his attempt to question it.

However, Lyotard sees this as a necessary step to understanding cultural difference. Another trend in criticism is to marginalize Lyotard’s work as unintelligible or incomprehensible language that is not rigorous enough to be thought of as philosophy. In this case, the philosophers who assert this are unwilling to engage with Lyotard’s work because of its nonuniversalist conclusions and dismiss it based on its differing philosophical style.

Overall, Lyotard’s legacy to political thought is substantial because of his expansion of the debate of justice, ethics, and politics. Even if orthodox liberals and communitarian political philosophers question his applicability to their specific conversations, his work challenges the assumptions on which many of those debates are executed.

Bibliography:

Lyotard, Jean-François. Just Gaming. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
The Postmodern Explained: Correspondence, 1982–1985. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
Postmodern Fables. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

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