Jean-François Lyotard

The article analyses Alain Badiou`s philosophy from the point of view of his relation to postmodernity. Alain Badiou is a political activist, mathematician, writer, playwright and literary critic. However, above all, he is a philosopher of the totality who attempts to give a thoroughgoing explanation of the world. This is the sense in which he is an anti-postmodernist. His whole philosophy is directed against sophistry. Badiou consistently builds his own system in order to oppose it to the philosophy of the (...) twentieth century. He does not engage in dogmatic criticism. He goes further and repeatedly finds inspiration in the postmodern thought. Although his philosophy is evidently opposed to it, his anti-postmodernity should be considered a synthetic attempt to exceed two competing traditions. (shrink)

Kirjasymposioartikkeli esittelee Hanna Meretojan teoksen The Ethics of Storytelling: Narrative Hermeneutics, History, and the Possible (Oxford University Press, 2018) keskeisimmät ajatukset ja kytkee ne laajempaan hermeneuttiseen ja jälkistrukturalistiseen ajatteluperinteeseen, etenkin Jean-François Lyotardin luonnehdintaan jälkimodernista aikakaudesta suurten modernien historiallisten metakertomusten horjumisen ja pienten paikallisten kertomusten moneuden aikakautena. Tässä valossa Meretojan hermeneuttista kertomusetiikkaa voidaan lukea ennen muuta pienten, ei-totalisoivien kertomusten etiikkana. Artikkeli esittää, että tällaiselle etiikalle löytyy hedelmällinen vertailukohta Hannah Arendtin totalitarismiteoriasta, joka sijoittaa ideologiset metakertomukset totalitaarisen hallinnan ja sen tuottaman ”banaalin pahuuden” (...) ytimeen; niin Arendtin kuin Meretojankin kertomusetiikan keskeisenä viitekohtana on holokausti moderniteetin eettisenä nollapisteenä. Nämä yhteydet tuovat esiin Meretojan hahmotteleman hermeneuttisen etiikan laajan teoreettisen kaikupohjan myöhäismodernissa ajatteluperinteessä. Lopuksi pohditaan kysymystä hermeneuttisen pienten kertomusten etiikan jatkuvasta ajankohtaisuudesta sosiaalisen median ja sen ”kuplien” aikakaudella. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss cases in which moral grievances, particularly assertions that a moral injury has taken place, are systematically obstructed by received linguistic and epistemic practices. I suggest a social epistemological model for theorizing such cases of moral epistemic injustice. Towards this end, I offer a reconstruction of Lyotard’s concept of the differend, comparing it to Miranda Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice, and considering it in light of some criticisms posed by Axel Honneth. Through this reconstruction and a (...) series of examples, I demonstrate that a basic formal structure recurs in cases of discursively repressed moral injury, namely, a particular kind of dilemma. I argue that appreciating this dilemma pushes us in the direction of a form of non-ideal ethical theory and I conclude by elaborating a conception of moral reflective judgment that begins from particular experiences of moral injury and moves towards the creation of new moral universals. (shrink)

Zijn filosofen gek? Zo ja, waarom? En ligt dat dan aan de filosoof, aan de filosofie of aan de diagnostiek? Dat zijn de vragen die in 'Diagnose van de moderne filosoof' centraal staan. Nicole des Bouvrie neemt aan de hand van het diagnostische handboek van psychiaters en psychologen (de DSM-V) de situatie van de hedendaagse denker onder de loep. Autisme, psychoses, anorexia en andere aandoeningen passeren de revue, om aan de hand van een grondige anamnese van hedendaagse denkbeelden uit de (...) westerse filosofie een diagnose te stellen. ''Des Bouvrie laat als geen ander zien hoe filosofie en waanzin zich in elkaar kunnen verstrikken, maar ook hoe ze bij elkaar een zone van vrijheid vinden.'' Filosoof Wouter Kusters, winnaar Socratesbeker 2015. (shrink)

A review of Andrew Slade‘s Lyotard, Beckett, Duras, and the Postmodern Sublime (New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2007, 136 pp. ISBN 0820478628).

In my view, postmodernism, as a cluster of bold epistemological claims, foundered on the rocks of contemporary science. Many postmodern positions about knowledge have conflicted with views of science that are extraordinarily difficult to doubt, which in this short article (composed to honour Educational Philosophy and Theory's 50th anniversary), I point out and argue holds a lesson about how to undertake the philosophy of education.

In this paper, I build on Wittgenstein’s metaphor of a toolbox to introduce the metaphor of ‘tool confusion’ – how differing conceptual constructs may be applied, or misapplied, to one another and the effect that such applications have on the advancement of management theory. Moving beyond metaphor, I investigate a theory of management through two specific philosophical lenses. This analysis tests both the theory and the philosophies with regard to how each philosophy may be applied as a tool to advance (...) theory towards more effective application. Preliminary conclusions confirm that the application of partial philosophies is not as useful as the application of complete philosophies. Deeper contemplation, however, suggests that there is no upper limit to the completeness of philosophies. Thus, the problem of completeness is inescapable. In place of completeness, I explore the use of perceptual tools that are more specific, foundational and concise. Engaging in a second investigation, I use structures of logic to investigate the subject theory. This investigation suggests at least two important insights relating to the structure of theory and the fuzziness of theory. Combined, these investigations and related conversations suggest rigorous methods for advancing theories and a more normative role for the philosophy of management that will support the accelerated advancement of management theory and practice. (shrink)

A discussion of whether Habermas as a representative modernist and Lyotard as a representative postmodern echo the ancient dispute between Plato and the Sophists. My conclusion is that they do not quite do so. Each is more complex and ancient dichotomy should be revised.

My dissertation presents a comprehensive rethinking of the Kantian imperative, articulating it on the basis of what I call originary sense. Calling primarily upon the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard, I show (1) that sense constitutes the ontologically most basic dimension of our worldly being and (2) that the way in which this sense happens is determinative for our experience of the ethical imperative. By originary sense I mean to name something that is neither sensible sense (...) (sensation) nor intelligible sense (meaning), but rather a kind of unity of these two that is ontologically anterior to their separation. In the first chapter I follow Merleau-Ponty’s argument in Phenomenology of Perception that sensible sense and intelligible sense belong originarily together at the level of the lived body. We are able to intend the meaning of worldly situations (Husserl’s Sinngebung) only insofar as we are responsive in an embodied way to the imperatives that are given in the sensible itself. The intelligible lawfulness so characteristic of the Kantian imperative is thus shown to be grounded in a more fundamental unity of intelligible and sensible sense. The second chapter follows Merleau-Ponty’s later works, especially The Prose of the World and The Visible and the Invisible, showing how the sensibility that is inseparable from the imperative introduces important limitations to the universalizing tendencies of Kant’s moral philosophy, drawing us back to the irreducible situatedness of ethical situations. In the third chapter I turn to the very different articulation of sense given by Gilles Deleuze, primarily in his Logic of Sense. I show there that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological conception of sense does not allow us to think the singularity of the imperative, the fact that the ethical command weighs on a me that cannot be grasped in terms of the generalities of my public identity. This singularity corresponds broadly to the idea of dignity in Kant’s moral philosophy. I argue that Deleuze, who conceptualizes sense as an event, gives us the resources to think singularity and to understand what it entails for our ethical practice. Finally, I attempt in the fourth chapter to think these two sides of the imperative—its demand for universality and its emphasis on singularity and dignity— together in the idea of libidinal sense. Calling on Jean-François Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy and, to a lesser extent, on Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, I show that these two apparently incompatible requirements of the imperative have a common source in the event of libidinal investment (cathexis). In thus locating the source of the imperative in originary, libidinal sense, I hope both to shed some light on the irreducible complexity of our ethical being and to present a more humane, less moralizing version of the imperative than is typically articulated in moral philosophy. (shrink)

. This work will be useful to all who wonder what to do about the largely negative results of postmodern thought.Ó ÑJoseph C. Flay The Resources of Rationality addresses the postmodernist assault on the claim of reason and develops a ...

Taking as his starting-point the emerging scientific view of the universe as a free, unpredictable, self-ordering evolutionary process in which human cultural history plays a leading part, Turner (arts and humanities, U. of Texas at Dallas) ...

I.One of the most instructive passages I have ever read is found in C. S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man, about the textbook writers and the waterfalls. The story goes that the English poet Coleridge records the reaction of two ordinary tourists on first seeing a particularly lovely waterfall. One of these tourists called it “pretty,” while the other called it “sublime.” Coleridge, of course, thought the tourist calling it “sublime” was correct, while the one calling it merely “pretty” was (...) lacking in some perception or appreciation of the reality before him. There was a note of “culpability” in…. (shrink)

Metaphysics, understood as the first philosophy, that is, the science of the ultimate foundations and principles of being, has long been declared an anachronism in the postmodern period.1 The pluralistic character of being, the heterogeneity of types of philosophical discourse and their mutual irreducibility, the spatiotemporal discreteness of various ontologies and epistemologies, the understanding of tradition as a given that needs to be overcome rather than continued—all these indicators point to the paradigm of new thinking within which flows the mainstream (...) of twentieth-century philosophical thought. Outside this stream stands the figure of K.-O. Apel, who is devoted to the idea of a single philosophy and continues to uphold it in the face of criticism from all sides. Apel's quixotic unwillingness to relinquish his stance is demonstrated by his new book, published in 1998, in which he continues to develop his ideas, which constitute a complete conception of transcendental pragmatism.2 Inasmuch as a theory that had apparently been relegated to books on the history of philosophy has become topical again, my task is to return to its sources and to reconstruct3 and analyze its basic propositions. (shrink)

"Art history and art theory are inseparable. A history of art can be achieved only through the simultaneous construction of a theory of art." These words of the eminent scholar and critic Louis Marin suggest why he considered the paintings and the writings of Nicolas Poussin, painter and theoretician of painting, an enduring source of inspiration. Poussin was the artist to whom Marin returned most faithfully over the years. Since Marin did not live to write his proposed book on Poussin, (...) the ten major essays in this volume will remain his definitive statement on the painter who inspired his most eloquent and probing commentary. At the center of Marins inquiry into Poussins art are the theory and practice of "reading" paintings. Rather than explicate Poussins work through systematic textual and iconographic analysis, he sets out to explore a cluster of speculative questions about the meaning of pictorial art: Can painting be a discourse? If so, how can that discourse be deciphered? Marins horizon for interpreting Poussin depends more on the concepts of aesthetic philosophy and the insights of cultural history than on an account of the painters career or his relationship with his artistic predecessors. For example, he positions several of Poussins best-known landscapes with respect both to French seventeenth-century debates on the question of the sublime and to the philosophical tradition of reflection on the sublime. Among the topics Marin studies are the tempest as a major figure of the sublime in Poussins work, the presence of ruins in the paintings, Poussins use of the concept of metamorphosis, and the frequent presence of sleeping bodies in the work. The Poussin who emerges in these essays is preeminently a philosopher-artist whose painterly discourse embodies the limits of thought and of representation. (shrink)

This dissertation investigates the relation between postmodern philosophies of language and contemporary studies in rhetoric and composition. ;Chapter one addresses the modern/postmodern dichotomy in a review of contemporary and historical thinkers. Most notable here is an analysis of Jean Francois Lyotard's "Report on Knowledge" and Jurgen Habermas's "Modernity: an Incomplete Project" and the conclusion that postmodernism is, indeed, an epoch in its own right. ;Chapters two through four investigate the composing process's aesthetic nature in a comparative presentation of Marcel Duchamp's (...) plastic art and Robert Frost's "Mending Wall." Here, Duchamp's call for a "readable" art-work aligns with Roman Ingarden's literary theory that reading a work is as much an act of composing as is its original "creation." ;A phenomenological reading of Frost's poem reveals the same processes observed in Duchamp's and Ingarden's shared assumptions: Essentially, all meaning lies in aesthetic interface where art gains its validity at the time of its viewing. Neither an artist nor her audience can ever act alone. This realization has vast implications for composition pedagogy generally and for reader-response applications particularly. ;Chapters five and six bring philosophical hermeneutics into the contemporary composition classroom. Here phenomenology and American pragmatism come together in Louise Rosenblatt's transactional response theory and the call for a philosophical approach to composition pedagogy. Inasmuch as the act of composing relies upon the reading of one's subject and the reading of one's subject relies upon a relativistic re-composition process, this section addresses the work of social constructionists Kenneth Bruffee, Timothy Crusius and Doug Brent. Chapter six recognizes the need for a sense of postmodern responsibility as a means to knowing in a world too complex to be known through a singular epistemology. This study's final assertion is that the only way to postmodern responsibility is through the social reading/writing skills found in the philosophically based composition classroom. (shrink)

My dissertation examines two predominant topics in contemporary cultural and literary studies: those of feminine sexual difference and the sublime. It explores what the current preoccupation with the sublime has to do with modern and postmodern women's writing fiction and feminist thought, and seeks to discover what in the theory of the sublime may be, and have been, gendered as feminine. I discuss some of the classic texts that make up the sublime canon in light of recent male critical treatments (...) and contemporary feminist theory , and read literary texts by primarily twentieth-century women writers as both exemplifying and in some cases revising what the tradition has called "the sublime." Analysis of major works on the sublime in terms of recent feminist and literary theory shows that representations of feminine difference raise in gender-specific terms the very issues that traditionally have been at stake in the sublime. Both focus on the formation and instability of self-identity; are concerned with the construction and destruction of borders ; and involve a confrontation with the question of how such limits may or may not be enforced. The dissertation examines the ways in which a feminist point of view may alter existing theorizations of the sublime, and suggests that re-reading the texts that form the sublime canon has much to teach us about twentieth-century women's fiction and the construction of femininity. Rather than produce a chronological or formalistic study, I attempt to disclose a conjunction between apparently dissimilar domains that historically has been at work, and thereby achieve a more complete understanding of each. (shrink)