Lyotard's Knowledge Of The Legalization Of The Theory

Lean-Francois Lyotard (1924-1998) is known as one of the greatest prominent postmodernists in the contemporary era. The most fundamental important contribution which he has made to the ideological trend of postmodernism thoughts is his "The Legitimation of Knowledge" theory, but few people do the essential work on this theory. In the view of that, this thesis will well-arrange and refine the unique connotation of it, the crisis status of knowledge in the postmodern situation, the rebuild of the legitimation of knowledge and the related things systematically, and attempt to give a historical appraisal to his ideology. This thesis is mainly divided into four parts, as follow:The first part mainly combines the version of "The Legitimation of Knowledge" and specifically defines the distinctive connotation of "Postmodern" "Knowledge" and "legitimation" which is distinct from other scholars. At length, he defines "Postmodern" as "incredulity toward meta-narratives" and he divides "Knowledge" into "Scientific Knowledge" and "Narrative Knowledge". He thinks that the dominating scientific knowledge proves its Legitimation obviously or ambiguously through narrative knowledge, while narrative knowledge is based on demonstration free and doubtless theory of "Meta-narratives" which can be divided into analytic philosophical narratives and liberal political narratives. And these give a basis to the following systematic combing of "The Legitimation of Knowledge".The second part mainly analyzes the crisis status of knowledge in the postmodern situation. In Lyotard's view, the society with the development of economy, the extensive application of computer and data base, the explosion of knowledge of human beings, in 1950's, the west world strides into the post-industrial society. The post-industrial society or in another word the postmodern society occurs countless fission, with the traditional authority and entirety totally negated and doubtfully exam, and with the knowledge in the shadow of money. In the postmodern world, the speech right's domination of scientific knowledge is invalid. The meta-narratives whether the analytic philosophical narratives or the liberal political narratives begin to decline, begin to lose the trust of the man, thus the narrative knowledge is under crisis, too. The specific manifestation of crisis status of knowledge is: Change in nature, function, and way of transmission. Hence, the knowledge under the crisis status presents utilitarianism, commercialization, and right.The third part estimates the rebuild of the legitimation of knowledge. Now that knowledge is under crisis, the legitimation is invalid, but knowledge indeed needs the certification of legitimation, so how can we rebuild its legitimation? Lyotard intensely opposes the performable system described by Luhmann and consensus system described by Habermas. He advocates not only scientific knowledge but also narrative knowledge is many-faceted and changeable. For this reason, he builds the famous "Language Games" method. He approves the right of various kinds of "Language Games" to be protected, while opposes the domination of any of it. He believe only through "Language Games" rule, permitting the existence of difference, giving up consensus by paralogy, the legitimation of knowledge can be rebuilt. Additionally, in this part, it refers to another concept closely related to knowledge-scholar, his lot, and the conduction they should have under the crisis circumstance of knowledge.And the last part is the historic appraisal about Lyotard's "The Legitimation of Postmodern Knowledge". This theory has important theoretical and practical meaning. Lyotard's theory has cast enlightenment to the innovation of knowledge, the popularity of higher education and many-faceted civilization, etc under the condition of socialistic market-oriented economy.