File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1999/lyotard.9912, message 5


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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