Jean-François Lyotard

A positive answer to the postmodern condition?

Follow-up to https://medium.com/inserting-philosophy/what-is-postmodernism-6bf15a8d9e71

French philosopher and sociologist Lyotard (1924–1998) was a fierce critic of universalizing theories and “metanarratives” (narratives about narratives). In his book, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979), he proclaimed that we have outgrown our need for metanarratives or grand narratives. Metanarratives are grand totalizing theories and explanations about what reality is and why reality is the way it is. Hegel, Marx, and structuralists (and perhaps even Foucault) all offered metanarratives. They are also found more subtlety in widespread assumptions like the idea that science will provide us with all knowledge. Lyotard claimed that people have lost faith in these grand narratives and are forced to find new, smaller narratives to address social issues. His idea is similar to Nietzsche’s idea that “God is dead.” The old stories are no longer believed, and society is now fractured as people search for knowledge and meaning.

Metanarratives and the Differend

Lyotard, took the post in postmodern seriously. We are moving out of modernism. What we are moving into, Lyotard said, is the postmodern awareness that we are not all the same…