Jean-François Lyotard , born the August 10th 1924 and dead the April 21st 1998, is a Philosophe French associated with the Post-structuralism and generally recognized for its theory of the Postmodernité.

In the line of Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and critic of the author, Lyotard writes a postmodern fable, true critical Sujet.

Communist anti-authoritative, Jean-François Lyotard took part in the years 1950 in the group Socialisme or cruelty, which was then on positions conseillist and denounced the USSR like a form of capitalism of state. In 1959, Jean-François Lyotard leaves Socialisme or cruelty to found a new organization of far left which will take the name of working Pouvoir.

It takes part in the review Critique '' under the direction of Jean Piel

Under the name of Jef, it is one of the characters of the novel the Pierrot-the-moon , of Pierre Gripari, which was his/her fellow student.

Died in 1998, Jean-François Lyotard was buried with Paris, with the Cimetière of the Father-Lachaise.

An international symposium was devoted to him to Paris from January 25th to 27th 2007 with the international Collège of philosophy.

the disagreement (1983)

The thought of Lyotard is difficult to classify; one often places it at the crossroads of the Philosophie, the Linguistique and the Critique arts person. Lyotard took part besides in all these spheres of the contemporary knowledge, and one often associates it with the discipline compared Littérature. Of all its books, a work seems to occupy a particular place in work: in fourth of cover of the Disagreement published to the editions of Midnight, Lyotard speaks about it like its " deliver philosophie". This test is placed openly in the category of the Philosophie of the language. Lyotard, which blames the " at it; présence" modern subject of the knowledge (of which it had shown the " métarécit of the émancipation" in the postmodern condition; report/ratio on the knowledge ) known as that at the beginning " there is a phrase": one knows neither who pronounces it, neither what she says, nor to which she is addressed. The sentence is the Figure by which its vision of the language and the reports/ratios is based that it maintains with the thought. In general, the modern Western thought presupposes the possibility of a Consensus on certain referents " extra-textuels" (time, space, the law, justice, the being, etc), of the referents which exist apart from their presentation in a conversation, a written text or an audio-visual document. Lyotard supports that the statute " extra-textuel" of these referents is problematic and that it exists not platform universal on which to think emergence and historicity of these referents, which must always be presented in a sentence which invents the Concept of it, to some extent. So that the sentence " the meeting is levée" has a direction, it is necessary that another sentence contextualisé the concepts of " séance" and of " to raise a séance" ; these two concepts do not go from oneself, are not objects likely to be seized by a universal conscience; they are always specific to a certain speech.

Lyotard insists much in the Différend on the concept of " plays of langage" , that it borrows from the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, a thinker who, although associated with Anglo-Saxon analytical philosophy, dissociates from it by his refusal (in the philosophical Investigations , in particular) of some " elements simples" given a priori.

The language is not a static object which one could define a priori . It is rather composed of certain plays, whose rules change as their participants carry blows there. " Raconter" , " juger" , " interroger" , " analyzer" are all of the different plays which have their own rules. Lyotard supports that there does not exist universal platform where one could judge all these plays of language. In any sentence, there is inevitably a " différend". An erudite speech, registered voter in the play of the positive knowledge, will not be able " entendre" with a speech of the phenomenologic experiment, or a esoteric experiment, which have both established among in the contemporary thought.

In the same way, to take again his example drawn from the Marxist speech, the worker who faces the owner will undergo a " tort" if its labor force is treated like goods, since, for the worker, this work belongs to its being, its experiment of life, and that one makes violence with this experiment by comparing it to an object which can be haggled over, exploited for profit. The play of language of the owner makes undergo a wrong to the speech of the worker if this last does not have the means of putting forward its point of view. The discussion of these two plays cannot be done in a neutral space, a space of the " litige" where a universal rule would make it possible to slice the debate.

For Lyotard, the litigation is a modern fiction; it proceeds of the illusion of a space apart from the history, the ideology, the space which a large side of the analytical philosophy of the XXe century seems to presuppose. The language proceeds rather of the " différend": the sentence which presents the " cause" (that one must include/understand here in the context of a lawsuit) is always interested and historical; she always answers the requirements of some " perspective" who will make wrong to the prospects which are opposite for him.

Lyotard insists, while finishing, on the importance to give established among with speeches, new " plays of langage" , which makes it possible the new wrongs to be said and to be written. The test carries with him a political vision expresses which is never carried to the foreground, and which however constitutes of it the pretext (a characteristic suitable for other texts lyotardiens like Discours, figure , the postmodern condition or enthusiasm where it positions the knowledge as an ideological weapon).

Lyotard opens its matter on the question of the negation of the Holocaust. It quotes the historian Faurisson revisionist, who blames the existence of the gas chambers in the camps of death. The question is simple: how to prove that the gas chambers existed? Who can testify some, if not those which died about it? Modern science and the knowledge have very few weapons to defend oneself vis-a-vis such attacks. From this premise all the remainder rises from its matter, which blames the great presuppositions of the modern thought and announces the need for new paradigms.

the postmodern condition: report/ratio on the knowledge (1979)

Undoubtedly the test more known and more quoted of Lyotard, the postmodern condition has this rare quality to have opened a complete field of theoretical investigation. However, this test, ordered by the Government of the Quebec, is not the first text to be put before a theory of the Postmodernité. It would be besides problematic to see in Lyotard the father of what the Americans call the postmodern studies . This concept being treated in a way extremely varied at a panoply of authors, it is strongly recommended not to seek in this text neither a final definition, nor a genesis of the concept.

Lyotard initially seeks to comment on the state of the knowledge at the end of the XXe century. It approaches the knowledge from an epistemological point of view, while trying not to carry a subjective value judgment there and while insisting on the characteristics specific to the contemporary Discours on knowledge. As in all its books, Lyotard works out its matter using the vocabulary of the Phénoménologie. The knowledge knew important upheavals at the XXe century. For Lyotard, these upheavals mark the end of the hegemonic capacity of what it calls modernity the Métarécits.

Lyotard announces the end of both large métarécits modern: the métarécit of the emancipation of the rational subject and the métarécit of the history of the universal spirit. The modern thought was a long time the history of a Subject of the knowledge which progressed in its search of justice and social advance; there was formerly an authority which made this search the account of a walk towards the rational emancipation. This authority was based on the thought of the Lumières, Kant and Rousseau, in particular. The concept of subject of knowledge is difficult to circumscribe: many are the analytical philosophers who will denounce this manner that has Lyotard to make the character of it, the protagonist, of an almost fictitious history, a theory of the properly narrative history. The Modernité is an extremely vast concept, and the test falls under an important debate concerning the statute of conceptual knowledge, resting on the establishment of the laws of the human thought.

In this respect, the thought of Lyotard is often opposed to that of the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, described like the defender of the spirit of Aufklarung. This question of the spirit is important besides with the debate, since Lyotard proclaims in its test the end of what it calls universal history the métarécit of the Spirit allotted to the philosopher Hegel. The idea that one time the intellectual production must be seen like local and historical matérialisation of a universal spirit, this idea does not hold any more in the contemporary thought, which seems more not to answer the call of the great idealized stories of modernity.

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