Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 03:52:15 EST Subject: Re: OTB Lyotard framed his analysis of Kant as a postmodernist. He, like his fellow postmodernists, seems to view any conceptual scheme or construction as a "grand narrative," (Lyotard) "language game," (Wittgenstein) "paradigm," (Kuhn) or some other postmodern term, which suggests a certain degree of flippancy and detachment towards any epistemological project. Therefore, although I''m not an expert on Lyotard, I would assume that Kant would be critiqued as a thorough, dilligent, comprehensive constructor of a conceptual scheme. For example, in "Critique of Pure Reason" and the "Critique of Pure Judgment", Kant articulates a systematic formulation of epistemological and aesthetic theories. These techniques seem to be antithetical to the postmodern mind, which speaks in riddles and ironic, ambiguous double-entendres-(ala Derrida and Nietschze) . Maybe Kant would be critiqued as a deeply religious, Calvinistic man who was deeply disturbed by the disentegration of the Empiricist project- which was so expertly undermined by Hume. Maybe Kant, through his academic work, was simply re-establishing a degree of conceptual order, to allow for the existence of God, free will, and bourgeois morality. If formulations are viewed as transitory adaptations, than maybe Kant's work could be viewed as a buttress against an eroding world-view. As I recall from "The Post-Modern Condition," Lyotard categorizes the classical, modern, and post-modern epistemological schemes. The classical ontology was supposedly derived from nature, such as Aristotelian teleology, or emanating from a transcendental reservoir, such as Platonism. Kant would be categorized as a modernist, along with Descartes and the French Enlightenment thinkers, as a man who believed in science, reason and meritocracy. Lyotard viewed these people as devoted to a rationalist, public-sector project that could be perfected through the human intellect and discipline. They believed that they could create eradicate superstition, while creating an antiseptic domain of purified rationality and scientific objectivism. As we know, Lyotard, as a post-modernist, views these projects as futile and unhealthy. He, like other postmodernists, encourages a climate of pluralistic ontologies, with an almost ecological conception of balance and moderation.
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