Jean-François Lyotard made extensive use of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion of a “language game”. He believed that there are many different language games of truth, knowledge and justice. Lyotard also believed that these games should be emphasised and supported as a means to combat what he called “terror” (which is brought about by an adherence to “metanarratives”). However, what we may have instead (in both theory and in practice) is a “war of all against all” in which the members of one language game fight the members of other language games in an effort to establish their own hegemony and political power. Identity politics is just one consequence of Lyotard’s postmodern vision.
This essay is an analysis of parts of The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, a book by the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. Lyotard actually introduced the term “postmodernism” to philosophy, the social sciences and politics. It’s a term that had been used before, but only by art critics.
Lyotard defined the term (within The Postmodern Condition) this way:
“[ ] I define ‘postmodern’ as incredulity towards metanarratives.”
This book was originally written as a report on the influence of technology in the sciences. It was commissioned by the Conseil des universités du Québec, and readers will find specific references to Canada within it.
Little Language Games
Jean-François Lyotard overstretched the term “language game” to include denotative statements and prescriptive statements. It was overstretched in that it stripped the term of any efficacy or even meaning. In other words, if every “discourse” constitutes a language game, then no discourse constitutes a language game.
Did Lyotard reach his conclusions about language games via the case of different kinds of statement? In simple terms, he believed that “denotative statements” belong to one language game, and “prescriptive statements” belong to another.
Lyotard analysed (or described) denotative statements and prescriptive statements. He provided the statements “The door is closed” and “Open the door” as examples. Lyotard stated that
“[t]he two statements belong to two autonomous sets of rules defining different kinds of relevance, and therefore of competence”.
Moreover, “The door is closed” is an example of “cognitive or theoretical reason”, and “Open the door” is an example of “practical reason”. Now readers needn’t agree with Lyotard’s ways of distinguishing these particular statements to accept that they really are of a different logical order. However, for those outside Lyotard’s tradition, readers won’t immediately see how the statement “The door is closed” has anything to do “theoretical reason”, let alone with the “discourse of science”. Similarly, some readers won’t immediately see how the statement “Open the door” is connected to the philosophical and technical term “practical reason”.
More broadly, Lyotard argued that “there is no relation of consequence as defined in propositional logic” between the statements “The door is closed” and “Open the door”. He explained as follows:
“There is nothing to prove that if a statement describing a real situation is true, it follows that a prescriptive statement based upon it (the effect of which will necessarily be a modification of that reality) will be just.”
That seems correct. After all, a prescriptive statement may well be “based upon” denotative statements, but that’s not enough to demonstrate that the prescriptive statement is just. In this case at least, the words “based upon” simply mean something like “about” or “a response to”. And such a relation isn’t enough to necessitate a “relation of consequence as defined in propositional logic”. (All this, of course, is reminiscent of the fact-value distinction, as well as the naturalistic fallacy.)
Why does recognising these distinctions “attack the legitimacy of the discourse of science”? It can be argued that neither statement, strictly speaking, belongs to science. Yet Lyotard believed that the statement “The door is closed” does so.
Lyotard again explored the differences between denotative statements and prescriptive statements in order to get his larger political point across. He wrote:
“The important thing is not, or not only, to legitimate denotative utterances pertaining to the truth, such as ‘The earth revolves around the sun,’ but rather to legitimate prescriptive utterances pertaining to justice, such as ‘Carthage must be destroyed’ or ‘The minimum wage must be set at x dollars’.”
All this will be tackled later.
For now, what has all that to do with language games?
More clearly, can we move from the distinction between denotative statements and prescriptive statements to language games?
Lyotard certainly made that move.
Lyotard and Wittgenstein
As may be obvious to some readers, Lyotard borrowed the term “language game” from Ludwig Wittgenstein. (He mentioned Wittgenstein a few times in his The Postmodern Condition.) For example, he quotes Wittgenstein writing the following:
“‘Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods: and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.’”
One immediate reaction to that passage is that it seems to rule out the notion of incommensurability (or Lyotard’s “autonomy” of language games), which is often invoked in discussions about language games. [See here.]
If we take this quote literally, then a city with “old and new houses”, “houses with additions from various periods”, and “new boroughs” hardly hints at incommensurability when it comes to language games. In this city, old and new houses exist together. Old houses have new additions. And new boroughs exist alongside (if on the surroundings) old boroughs. Thus, they all exist together. Yet some theorists take language games to be incommensurable. Clearly, in this case at least, difference doesn’t imply or entail incommensurability.
Lyotard saw this passage from Wittgenstein as displaying the case against
“the principle of unitotality — or synthesis under the authority of a metadiscourse of knowledge — is inapplicable”.
Perhaps the problem here is that Wittgenstein’s metaphor simply doesn’t work for language games. Isn’t Wittgenstein’s city actually a totality, if one with many differences?
Lyotard/Wittgenstein asked: “[H]ow many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?” Has anyone ever taken a Platonic position on towns? Moreover, Lyotard claimed that this is an example of the “old sorites paradox”.
Lyotard interprets Wittgenstein’s city as being a metaphor for language games, and Wittgenstein did too. In Wittgenstein’s case, he made this metaphor concrete by firstly citing the example of “the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinitesimal calculus”. Lyotard himself then put his own examples into the pot:
“M]achine language, the matrices of game theory, new systems of musical notation, systems of notation for non denotive forms of logic (temporal logics, deontic logics, modal logics), the language of the genetic code, graphs of phonological structures, and so on.”
It’s odd that all the above were deemed to be language games by Lyotard. What’s more, can’t there be different discourses within a given language game?
Perhaps Wittgenstein’s city, and its relation to language games, should be left alone precisely because it is metaphorical.
However we interpret Lyotard’s position on all this, his own conclusions and lessons are clear. He told his readers that
“[w]e may form a pessimistic impression of this splintering: nobody speaks all of those languages, they have no universal metalanguage”.
Again, Lyotard might have been guilty of overblowing the relevance of different discourses, and then concluding that this results in different language games. In addition, do all these examples taken together even require something as technical and specific as a metalanguage? After all, a metalanguage is designed to be meta when it comes to a specific language or system, not when it comes to almost everything.
Part Two: Lyotard’s Politics
Lyotard used the technical term language game to advance his own political project.
He told his readers that “there is no possibility that language games can be unified or totalized in any metadiscourse” (e.g., not in Marxism, fascism, liberalism, etc.). Indeed, not only are language games autonomous, it’s also the case that
“knowledge has no final legitimacy outside of serving the goals envisioned by the practical subject, the autonomous collectivity”.
Thus, if there are many language games, then there are many (pluralised) knowledges too. (Some readers may see here how Lyotard’s doctrine influenced feminist theories about knowledge.) Yet if there are different autonomous language games, each with its own autonomous knowledge, then doesn’t that bring about a “war of all against all”?…
Yet Lyotard believed the opposite: that a commitment to autonomous languages games, and autonomous knowledges, would stop what he called “terror”.
Now how would that work?
Lyotard did explain himself. However, his vision is so theoretical that it’s hard to make it concrete in terms of actual politics.
Specifically, Lyotard was against what he called “consensus”.
Consensus and Dialogue
Lyotard told his readers that “[c]onsensus has become an outmoded and suspect value”. In fact, he had a specific philosopher in mind when he wrote about this issue: Jürgen Habermas. Lyotard wrote:
“[I]t seems neither possible, nor even prudent, to follow Habermas in orienting our treatment of the problem of legitimation in the direction of a search for universal consensus, through what he calls *Diskurs*, in other words, a dialogue of argumentation.”
So Lyotard was against universal consensus. Or, to be fair, he believed that a universal consensus was impossible and not “even prudent” to search for. Why? Because such a search would require terror.
Lyotard himself defined the word “terror”:
“By ‘terror’ I mean the efficiency gained by eliminating, or threatening to eliminate, a player from the language game one shares with him. He is silenced or consents, not because he has been refuted, but because his ability to participate has been threatened.”
Here it’s an act of terror if a “player” is “silenced”… and it’s an act of terror if he’s not silenced too.
It should be said here that although Lyotard was against universal consensus, he wasn’t against what he called “dialogue”. Here Lyotard made a good — if also obvious — point about consensus: a consensus can never hold forever. Or, in Lyotard's terms, a consensus should never hold forever.
Lyotard called a consensus “a particular state of discussion, not its end”. Yet simply because a consensus won’t hold forever (or even shouldn't hold forever), that in itself doesn’t provide a reason to be against it.
More specifically regarding Lyotard's notion of “paralogy”: it isn’t written into the logic of consensus that it must rule out dispute, radical views, debate, dialogue, etc. These things can exist, and a consensus can still hold (if not forever).
So what is the best way to work against consensus? To emphasise language games. In Lyotard’s own words:
“A recognition of the heteromorphous nature of language games is a first step in that direction.”
Again, Lyotard was against consensus because he connected it to terror. Stressing language games, on the other hand, “obviously implies a renunciation of terror, which assumes that they are isomorphic and tries to make them so”.
In fact, Lyotard was really against what can be called a meta-consensus. That is a consensus that was intended to incorporate all language games. However, when it comes to a particular language game, then a consensus, and sets of rules within it, were fine by Lyotard. Lyotard himself wrote of
“the principle that any consensus on the rules defining a game and the ‘moves’ playable within it *must* be local”.
Justice, Not Truth
One common theme of Lyotard’s is that justice overrides truth.
Lyotard’s Nietzschean argument is that since things beyond truth have always been the name of the game (even in science — or especially in science), then shouldn’t postmodern theorists and postmodern activists simple carry on this tradition and be honest about putting justice before truth? Lyotard put this point in various ways. For example:
“A noteworthy result of the speculative apparatus is that all of the discourses of learning about every possible referent are taken up not from the point of view of their immediate truth-value, but in terms of the value they acquire by virtue of occupying a certain place in the itinerary of Spirit or Life…”
Of course, Lyotard wasn’t concerned with Spirit or even Life. However, he did learn from those who were so concerned. Lyotard, instead, was concerned with what he called “justice” — a word he used many times in The Postmodern Condition. Thus, Spirit or Life shouldn’t come before truth: justice must come before truth.
How can truth be erased from the scene when considering such a thing as justice?
Claims about justice may well not have a truth value. Yet those claims will still strongly depend on what is true (or the facts). In Lyotard's terms, claims about justice must strongly depend on “detonative statements” without thereby being detonative statements. After all, Lyotard himself didn’t believe in a free-for-all when it came to what justice is…
Or perhaps he did!
Earlier it was said that Lyotard's position erases truth. Yet Lyotard did go on to state the following:
“[T]he only role positive knowledge can play is to inform the practical subject about the reality within which the execution of the prescription is to inscribed. But the executory, what should be done, is not within the purview of positive knowledge.”
Lyotard finished off by saying that
“Knowledge is no longer the subject, but in the service of the subject: its only legitimacy (though it is formidable) is the fact that it allows morality to become reality”.
Lyotard then made his position even more concrete when he stated that
“[t]his introduces a relation of knowledge to society and the State which is in principle a relation of the means to the end”.
To put this in everyday prose. Lyotard believed that truth is nothing but a means to an end. That end being justice. Lyotard was also strongly against the “myth” that people pursue truth as an end in itself. Like Michel Foucault, he tied truth to power, as well as to “allowing justice to become reality”. [See my ‘Truth is Power: Foucault’s Battle to Create a New Regime of Truth’.] Thus, truths (as well as facts) can hardly be ignored. However, they have no non-political role.
So if justice is the end (i.e., truth isn’t an end in itself), then surely postmodernists will often indulge in “lying for justice” — their own version of Plato’s “noble lie”.
Metanarratives
All sorts of things have been classed as metanarratives. In one paragraph, Lyotard mentioned “Spirit” and, believe it or not, “the emancipation of humanity”. This is one reason — perhaps the main reason — why Marxists particularly have a problem with postmodern philosophy.
Let’s spell it out again.
Lyotard deemed the emancipation of humanity to be a “grand narrative”, and therefore deeply suspect. Indeed, he believed the same of Marxism itself. [See here.]
Humanity has just been mentioned. According to Lyotard:
“The Party takes the place of the University, the proletariat that of the people or of humanity, dialectical materialism that of speculative idealism.”
Lyotard also spoke of the “citations from the metanarrative of the march towards socialism”.
Conclusion
It doesn’t really matter that the technical term “language game” is technically weak and vague because Lyotard didn’t really use it to do philosophical analysis: he used it to advance political goals. Indeed, he was quite explicit about this.
Lyotard finished off his “report on knowledge” by telling his readers what it had all been about:
“This sketches the online of a politics that would respect both the desire for justice and the desire for the unknown.”
The unknown is embraced when “little narratives” are embraced. According to Lyotard, ideological fundamentalism and, indeed, truth (or meta-truth) both fight against the unknown.
Finally, postmodern philosophers are still concerned with justice. However, they don’t like (unlike Marxists and many others) how the pursuit of justice had been tied to grand narratives. And they don’t like how grand narratives have been tied to terror.
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