In this book it explores science and technology, makes connections between these epistemic, cultural, and political trends, and develops profound insights into the nature of our postmodernity.

In The Differend, Lyotard subjects to scrutiny- from the particular perspective of his notion of 'differend' - the turn of all Western philosophies toward language; the decline of metaphysics; the present intellectual retreat of Marxism; the hopes raised and mostly dashed, by theory; and the growing political despair. Taking his point of departure in an analysis of what Auschwitz meant philosophically, Lyotard attempts to sketch out modes of thought for our present.

Jean-Francois Lyotard's contribution to the debate, Heidegger and 'the Jews, ' is a marked departure from the standard fare. In the first of the two interrelated essays, 'the Jews, ' Leotard quickly establishes the theme of the entire text, placing 'the Jews' in lower case, plural, and in quotation marks to represent the outsiders, the nonconformists: the artists, anarchists, blacks, homeless, Arabs, etc. --and the Jews; as an alien and dangerous disruption, they represent an 'other' to be excised from the (...) West's dream of unbounded fulfillment and development. (shrink)

In The Differend, Lyotard subjects to scrutiny- from the particular perspective of his notion of 'differend' - the turn of all Western philosophies toward language; the decline of metaphysics; the present intellectual retreat of Marxism; the hopes raised and mostly dashed, by theory; and the growing political despair. Taking his point of departure in an analysis of what Auschwitz meant philosophically, Lyotard attempts to sketch out modes of thought for our present.

This latest offering from one of the founding figures of postmodernism is a collection of fifteen "fables" that ask, in the words of Jean-Francois Lyotard, "how to live, and why?

This translation of Lyotard's first book, La phenomenologie (first publication in 1954; the translation is from the 10th edition of 1986, Presses Universitaires de France) supplies an important link to Lyotard's more recent work.

Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) was one of the most important French philosophers of the Twentieth Century. His impact has been felt across many disciplines: sociology; cultural studies; art theory and politics. This volume presents a diverse selection of interviews, conversations and debates which relate to the five decades of his working life, both as a political militant, experimental philosopher and teacher. Including hard-to-find interviews and previously untranslated material, this is the first time that interviews with Lyotard have been presented as a (...) collection. Key concepts from Lyotard's thought – the differend, the postmodern, the immaterial – are debated and discussed across different time periods, prompted by specific contexts and provocations. In addition there are debates with other thinkers, including Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, which may be less familiar to an Anglophone audience. These debates and interviews help to contextualise Lyotard, highlighting the importance of Marx, Freud, Kant and Wittgenstein, in addition to the Jewish thought which accompanies the questions of silence, justice and presence that pervades Lyotard's thinking. (shrink)

A major figure in the contemporary critical world, Jean-Francois Lyotard originally introduced the term 'postmodern' into current discussions of philosophy. The Postmodern Explained is an engaging collection of letters addressed to young philosophers, including the actual children of some of Lyotard's colleagues, that inform the trajectory of his thinking in the period before The Postmodern Condition through The Differend.

Kant describes a conflict among the different theories of knowledge. A productive conflict whose emergence is the origin of a renewal: it awakens the spirit and it leads it to think critically. Philosophy becomes critique, Kant says, when it is not focused on the doctrines and on their demands, but on the relationship between general rules (the “sense”) that coordinates all the faculties – and their particular expression, that is to say the specific cases. Similarly operates the judge, that, in (...) court, has to invent (ausdenken) the rule capable of corresponding to the single case: a judge that, in order to decide (jus dicere) and utter the decision, tries to compensate the absence of adequate legal rules and often decides without the adapt general rule. The problem of the différend does not concern, thus, anthropology. It concerns language. Exemplary cases provide analoga of the sensitive data and are devices that allow the dialectic between different systems of value by connecting their core meaning, the proper names involved and what Kant defines the Darstellung. Nevertheless, against this background, a change of paradigm becomes necessary – a change that entails the break with hegelian philosophy of law and with a thought built on mediation, that is to say with the kantian Zusammenstimmung. It is not possible, nor desirable, to substitute the battle field with the court and to subordinate the individual interests to the general logic of argumentation, because the synthesis of the different voices might imply totalitarianism and the end of the différend might correspond to the beginning of terror. (shrink)

This book considers the possibility of ethical political practice after deconstruction. Both authors probe the relationship of language to truth and the consequences, for ethics and politics, of any theoretical posture on this issue: 'Can we have a politics without the Idea of justice? and if so, can we do so on the basis of opinion?'.

Lyotard approaches his subject by returning to his earliest phenomenological training, rearticulating Augustine's sensory universe from a vantage point imaginarily inside the confessant's world, a vantage point that reveals the intense point of conjuncture between the sensual and the spiritual, the erotic world and the mystical, being and appearance, sin and salvation. Lyotard reveals the very origins of phenomenology in Augustine's narrative, and in so doing also shows the origins of semiotics to lie there.

Invoking Laozi and Mencius, Jullien offers an oblique take on efficacy, one of China’s most intriguing yet most influential notions formulated in Daoism, the practice of art, and military strategies. It circumvents the heavy philosophical apparatus of means versus ends and theory versus practice that jam the Western conception of efficacy.

Enthusiasm is Lyotard's most elaborate and provocative statement on the politics of the sublime.

First published in 1974, Libidinal Economy is a major work of twentieth century continental philosophy. In it, Lyotard develops the idea of economies driven by libidinal 'energies' or 'intensities' which he claims flow through all structures, such as the human body and political or social events. He uses this idea to interpret a diverse range of subjects including political economy, Marxism, sexual politics, semiotics and psychoanalysis. Lyotard also carries out a broad critique of philosophies of desire, as expounded by Deleuze (...) and Guattari, Nietzsche, Bataille, Foucault and de Sade. (shrink)