Overview

Jean-Franpois Lyotard is one of the most influential critical thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century in Europe and is known for his critical contemplation of contemporary culture. He is most famous for his groundbreaking analysis of postmodernism. Lyotard is an influential critic of what he calls the grand narratives of Enlightenment: its legitimization of systematic, totalizing forms of knowledge and its ideology of rational progress. In articulating this critique, Lyotard positions himself within the tradition of the Frankfurt school and its negative analysis of the Enlightenment for pursuing an instrumental form of knowledge i.e. knowledge as mastery of things and people.' His work also constitutes critiques of philosophical closure, historical totalization of political dogmatism and a re-evaluation of the nature of ethics, aesthetics and politics after the collapse of totalizing metatheories. While discussing any topic, a work of art, a literary text, or theological arguments, his focus always falls upon the social and ethical issues that they evoke. Lyotard is primarily a political philosopher concerned with the ways in which men's lives are organized and controlled by the

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