Jean-François Lyotard





Jean-François Lyotard

Author profile


born
August 10, 1924 in Versailles, France

died
April 21, 1998

gender
male

genre


About this author

Jean-François Lyotard ( 10 August 1924– 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He is well-known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and the analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition.

He was born in 1924 in Versailles, France to Jean-Pierre Lyotard, a sales representative, and Madeleine Cavalli. He went to primary school at the Paris Lycées Buffon and Louis-le-Grand and later began studying philosophy at the Sorbonne. After graduation, in 1950, he took up a position teaching philosophy in Constantine in French East Algeria. Lyotard earned a Ph.D in literature. He married twice: in 1948 to Andrée May, with whom he had two daughters, and for a second time in 1993 to the mother...more


Average rating: 3.94 · 253 ratings · 27 reviews · 52 distinct works
The Postmodern Condition: A...
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3.79 of 5 stars 3.79 avg rating — 843 ratings — published 1979 — 16 editions
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A Derrida Reader: Between t...
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3.76 of 5 stars 3.76 avg rating — 63 ratings — published 1991
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The Inhuman: Reflections on...
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3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 avg rating — 54 ratings — published 1988 — 6 editions
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The Differend: Phrases in D...
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3.88 of 5 stars 3.88 avg rating — 43 ratings — published 1983 — 5 editions
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Lessons on the Analytic of ...
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3.74 of 5 stars 3.74 avg rating — 31 ratings — published 1991 — 3 editions
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Postmodern Explained: Corre...
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3.5 of 5 stars 3.50 avg rating — 36 ratings — published 1986 — 8 editions
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Libidinal Economy
3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 avg rating — 27 ratings — published 1974 — 7 editions
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Heidegger And The Jews
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3.74 of 5 stars 3.74 avg rating — 19 ratings6 editions
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Postmodern Fables
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4.12 of 5 stars 4.12 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 1997 — 2 editions
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Phenomenology
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3.79 of 5 stars 3.79 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 1989 — 3 editions
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More books by Jean-François Lyotard…
“…is postmodernity the pastime of an old man who scrounges in the garbage-heap of finality looking for leftovers, who brandishes unconsciousnesses, lapses, limits, confines, goulags, parataxes, non-senses, or paradoxes, and who turns this into the glory of his novelty, into his promise of change?”
Jean-François Lyotard

“He was too tough to experience disappointments and resentments — negative affections. In this nihilist fin de siècle, he was affirmation. Right through to illness and death. Why did I speak of him in the past? He laughed, he is laughing, he is here. It's your sadness, idiot, he'd say.”
Jean-François Lyotard

“Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.”
Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge