From: "Eric  Salstrand" <eric_and_mary-AT-email.msn.com>
Subject: Chapter 2 - Commentary
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 21:26:05 -0600


This chapter introduces a major theme of TPC - the crisis of legitimation.

There seems to be two shifts here that Lyotard is discussing.

1. The change in science itself, leading to the demoralization of scientists
and technicians.  As I read this, one way to describe the shift is the
different environment of science today.  Once a individual such as Ben
Franklin could fly a kite alone and discover an important principle of
electricity.  Today, in order to participate in the game of science, higher
levels of technology demand higher levels of funding.  What can be
researched is less a matter of the individual scientist than a absentee
board of directors who want to know what will pay.  To make a bad metaphor,
science may invent the car, but capitalism is in the driver's seat.

2. The traditional philosophical approach of legitimation is also in the
process of breaking down.  God has been the ultimate metaphysical principle
since the time of Plato.  God is the Occidental.  The identity of the Good,
the True and the Beautiful in God has long been the foundation for
integrating these ideas as a unity in Western thought.  Science was good
because it was true.  The presence of God guaranteed this was so.  Today,
however, the blessed trinity has been reduced to the Kantian conflict of the
faculties.  Pure reason (truth), practical reason (goodness) and reflective
judgement (beauty) now wage war.  Where God once was, the differend shall
be. If God is dead, how can science be legitimated?