Jean-François Lyotard quotes

Jean-François Lyotard was a French philosopher and literary theorist, recognized for his influential work on postmodernism. His most famous book, "The Postmodern Condition," analyzed how knowledge and culture have changed in the contemporary era. He became a central figure in critical theory, discussing the limits of grand narratives and the diversity of human experience. Here are 36 of his quotes:

Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.

Jean-François Lyotard

Our working hypothesis is that the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter the postmodern age.

Jean-François Lyotard

What is new in all this is that the old poles of attraction represented by nation-states, parties, professions, institutions, and historical traditions are losing their attraction. And it does not look as though they will be replaced, at least not on their former scale.

Jean-François Lyotard

A self does not amount to much, but no self is an island; each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before.

Jean-François Lyotard

The ruling class is and will continue to be the class of decision makers.

Jean-François Lyotard

The moment knowledge ceases to be an end in itself-its realization of The Idea or the emancipation of men-it's transmission is no longer the exclusive responsibility of scholars and students.

Jean-François Lyotard

Here is the question: is a legitimization of the social bond, a just society, feasible in terms of a paradox analogous to that of scientific activity? What would such a paradox be?

Jean-François Lyotard

Already in the last few decades, economic powers have reached the point of imperiling the stability of the state through new forms of the circulation of capital that go by the generic name of multinational corporations.

Jean-François Lyotard

The logic of maximum performance is no doubt inconsistent in many ways, particularly with respect to contradiction in the socio-economic field: it demands both less work (to lower production costs) and more (to lessen the social burden of the idle population). But our incredulity is now such that we no longer expect salvation to rise from these inconsistencies, as did Marx.

Jean-François Lyotard

...The sublime feeling is not mere pleasure as taste is – it is a mixture of pleasure and pain... Confronted with objects that are too big according to their magnitude or too violent according to their power, the mind experiences its own limitations.

Jean-François Lyotard

The body might be considered the hardware of the complex technical device that is human thought.

Jean-François Lyotard

Philosophy is possible only because the material ensemble called "man” is endowed with very sophisticated software. But also, this software, human language, is dependent on the condition of the hardware. Now: the hardware will be consumed in the solar explosion, taking philosophical thought with it (along with all other thought) as it goes up in flames. So the problem of the technological sciences can be stated as follows: how can we provide this software with a hardware that is independent of the conditions of life on earth? That is: how can we make thought without a body possible?

Jean-François Lyotard

The grand narrative has lost its credibility, regardless of what mode of unification is uses, regardless of whether it is a speculative narrative or a narrative of emancipation.

Jean-François Lyotard

The decline of narrative can be seen as an effect of the blossoming of techniques and technologies since the Second World War, Which has shifted emphasis from the ends of action to this means; it can also be seen as an effect of the redeployment of advanced liberal capitalism after its retreat under the protection of Keynesianism during the period of 1930-1960, a renewal that has eliminated the communist alternative and valorized the individual enjoyment of goods and services.

Jean-François Lyotard

Matter asks no questions, expects no answers of us. It ignores us. It made us the way it makes all bodies-by chance and according to its laws.

Jean-François Lyotard

Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major-perhaps the major- stake in the world wide. It is conceivable the nation state will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled over territory, and afterwards for control of access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor. A new field opened for industrial and commercial strategies on the one hand, and political and military strategies.

Jean-François Lyotard

The relationship of the suppliers and users of knowledge to the knowledge they supply and use is now tending, and will be increasingly tend to, to assume the form already taken by the relationship of commodity producers and consumers to the commodities they produce and consume--that is, the form of knowledge.

Jean-François Lyotard

There's a necessity for physical experience and a recourse to exemplary cases of bodily ascesis to understand and make understood a type of emptying of the mind, an emptying that is required if the mind is to think. This obviously has nothing to do with tabula rasa, with what Descartes (vainly) wanted to be a starting from scratch on the part of knowing thought.

Jean-François Lyotard

...Scientific knowledge does not represent the totality of knowledge; it has always existed in addition to, and in competition and conflict with, another kind of knowledge, which I will call narratives in the interest of simplicity.

Jean-François Lyotard

Let us wage war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable, let us activate the different and save the honor of the name.

Jean-François Lyotard

Legitimation is the process by which a legislator is authorized to promulgate such a law as a norm.

Jean-François Lyotard

In the discussion we had last year at Siegen, in this regard, emphasis was put on the sort of emptiness that has to be obtained from mind and body by a Japanese warrior-artist when doing calligraphy, by an actor when acting: the kind of suspension of ordinary intentions of mind associated with habitus, or arrangements of the body. It's at this cost, said Glenn and Andreas, ... that a brush encounters the "right” shapes, that a voice and a theatrical gesture are endowed with the "right” tone and look. The soliciting of emptiness, this evacuation-very much the opposite of overweening, selective identificatory activity-doesn't take place without some suffering. ... The body and mind have to be free of burdens for grace to touch us.

Jean-François Lyotard