Universality without consensus: Jean-François Lyotard on politics in postmodernity

Autor: Javier Burdman
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: Philosophy & Social Criticism. 46:302-322
ISSN: 1461-734X
0191-4537
DOI: 10.1177/0191453719854215
Popis: Lyotard’s diagnosis of a ‘postmodern condition’ has been repeatedly interpreted as a disavowal of the universal aspiration of political action and judgment. This article challenges this interpretation by showing that postmodernity involves an attempt to reconsider universality in such a way that it involves dissensus rather than consensus. I proceed by reconstructing Lyotard’s critique of the idea of consensus as a ground of political action and judgment, which in his view is based on a certain model of production of scientific knowledge. Then, I analyse Lyotard’s turn to Kant’s judgment of the sublime as an alternative to a consensus-based conception of universal judgments. In the judgment of the sublime, universality stems from the disagreement between the faculties, which arouses respect for universal ideas. Analogously, political judgments stem from the disagreement between heterogeneous discourses, which produces a universal call to invent new languages that make communication possible.
Databáze: OpenAIRE