File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1998/lyotard.9812, message 62


Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 12:59:15 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: legitimation


> But I think Lyotard was looking for legitimation of science in the 
> history of philosophy, following the usual suspects, Plato, Kant,
> Wittgenstein, whom he studied assiduosly and quoted copiously in
> "Le Differend".
> 
> Ultimately, he seemed to be interested in the social bond and justice,
> and how humans use language or language uses them in the pursuit of
> such interests.
> 
> Paralogy seems to have been a name for an attempt to get out of the
> rut of narratives, traditions, practice that do not fit the postmodern
> condition.
> 
> Hugh


Toward the end of PMC, Lyotard writes:

	"The function of the differential or imaginative or paralogical 
	activity of the current pragmatics of science is to point out these 
	metaprescriptives (science's 'presuppositions') and to petition the 
	players to accept different ones" (65)

Since "paralogy" (para-logics) falls out of Lyotard's vocabulary, we 
might not want to hold on to it so tightly, instead thinking about its 
relation within a string of synonyms (or differential definitions perhaps?)

As Hugh points out in the second half of his post, it's the relation 
between language games and social bonds (pragmatics) that interests 
Lyotard--and its relation to justice.

One way to think through what this paralogical/differential/imaginative 
might point to is to take up something like "passing" in the Inhuman, or 
"working through." Science, with its denotative language game, is all 
about determinations. Lyotard sees great *potential* in openness. My 
favorite Lyotard sentence has to be:

"Being prepared to receive what thought is not prepared to think is what 
deserves the name of thinking" ("Time Today," _The Inhuman_ 73).

It seems that legitimation by paralogy would involve one one hand a 
deligitmation of the limits of what can or cannot be thought and on the 
other an affirmation of the "petit recit": the imaginative that cannot 
be reduced to the "innovative" (the next/new step in an ongoing game.

Ed, I think your question about the difference between a new move and a 
new game (options c & d) comes in here: the difference between 
imaginative invention  and innovation.

In re justice, ethics, and "rules"--here's a long, long quote from a 
published interview with Lyotard: 

[quote begins here]

"I would say that even ethics is a specific genre of discourse (in _The 
Differend in any case, I've expressed it quite clearly). What 
constitutes ethics is the consciousness of duty: "Thou shalt do this" or 
"Thou shalt not do that," without knowing in advance how you have to act. 
I'm entirely in agreement with Kant or Levinas on this point. The problem 
that presents itself here is the following: Does ethics cover the totality 
of modes of conduct as they are to be taken into each genre of discourse? 
[....]

"I'm not so sure about this point. I see very well that ethics is 
indispensible, that we must make judgements to be able to conduct 
ourselves, and that we assume the resposibilty to judge reflectively 
without knowing the rules. But on the other hand, I'm tempted to say 
that ethics doesn't present any metaprescriptive; it's that genre of 
discourse in which the question of probity is asked. Instead of simply 
saying, 'You must be honest,' it asks 'What does it mean to be honest 
when you don't know the rules?' [....] The real ethical question comes 
when no rules are prescribed and despite this you must judge, i.e., you 
must, whether consciously or unconsciously, show yourself to be just, 
without possessing any rules or criteria. We don't--thank God--fall into 
this situation every day, but it keeps happening and it usually happens 
under different circumstances.

"That does not at all mean there is no justice any more, but, on the 
contrary, the problem of justice presents itself today with special 
urgency. This is due, on the one hand, to the multiplication of genres of 
discourse, each demanding its specific probity, and on the other hand, to 
the fact that precisely tbecause of this multiplication we lack a rule of 
coherence."

[endquote]

>From Florian Rotzer, _Conversations With French PHilosophers_ [1986], 
Trans. Gary Aylesworth (Atlantic Hiughlands, NJ: Humaniteis Press, 1995), 
pp 76-77.

   

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