Jean-François Lyotard: biography of this French philosopher

Jean-François Lyotard was a very important French philosopher, sociologist and literary theorist in the study of postmodernism and social movements, especially those of liberation such as the independence movement algerian

With a prolific literary and academic life, Lyotard has become one of the great figures in Marxist and Freudian philosophy in France.

Next we are going to discover his life and how he got involved in protest movements on the left, through a biography of Jean-François Lyotard, in summary format.

• Related article: "What is Critical Theory? The ideas, objectives and main authors of it "

Brief biography of Jean-François Lyotard

The life of Jean-François Lyotard was that of someone deeply scarred by the horrors of Nazi-occupied France, but far from apathetic. and in his resentment he knew how to channel the emotions of his experiences to generate a unique, vindictive and left-wing philosophy, critical of any type of dominance unfair.

early years

Jean-François Lyotard was born on August 10, 1924 in Versailles, France, into a humble family. He attended the Lycée Buffon primary school and, later, the Lycée Louis le Grand, both located in Paris.

As a child he had the most varied aspirations, including being an artist, historian, writer, and even a Dominican friar.. Over time he gave up on his dream of being a writer since, at the age of 15, he finished publishing a fiction novel that turned out to be unsuccessful. As for the friar thing, he decided to reject this idea because, according to himself, he loved women too much.

University education

He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne University in the late 1940s.. He had interrupted his studies at the outbreak of World War II, serving as a volunteer for first aid for the French army and participated in the fight to liberate Paris in August 1944. Witnessing so much destruction drew him to the early promises of socialism, becoming a devout Marxist at the end of the conflict.

In 1947 he completed his studies, presenting the thesis L'indifference comme notion éthique (Indifference as an ethical concept), where he analyzed the forms of indifference and detachment in different traditional schools of thought, including Zen Buddhism, Stoicism, Taoism and Epicureanism. Upon graduation he obtained a position at the French National Center for Scientific Research.

His youth was very demanding. He was active in leftist groups and his thought developed within what has been called critical Marxism., although he is rather classified as a Freudo-Marxist. He was a student of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, making him interested in phenomenology and leading to the publication of his first book on this theme in the collection "Que sais-je", providing a clear and global vision of the purpose of this philosophical current of the century xx.

But later he moved away from Marxism, and he initiated in the 1960s an evolution towards postmodernism, in which the development of an original thought can already be appreciated. At this time he focused on the theme of desire as a search for the impossible, using terms very close to those of psychoanalysis, especially the current of Jacques-Marie Émile Lacan.

During this same period he made important forays into the world of art., analyzing the pictorial work of figures as important as Paul Cézanne. This aesthetic analysis is done by Lyotard taking a perspective of the Freudian conception of art. Lyotard sees in Cézanne a kind of reinvestment of the meaning of said Freudian conception of art, relating it to unconscious impulses of the libido.

The experience in Algeria

In 1950 Lyotard accepted a position to teach philosophy at the lycee in Constantine, Algeria. In 1971 he obtained a state doctorate with his dissertation speech, figure under the guidance of Mikel Dufrenne. He devoted a period of his life to socialist revolutions, an issue that was evident in his writings that focused heavily on left-wing politics. It was at that time that he became interested in the Algerian War of Independence, that he experienced while there.

Lyotard exhibited at Le Differend that human discourse occurs in a varied but discrete number of immeasurable domains, none of which have the privilege of making value judgments about the others. in his works libidinal economy (1974) the postmodern condition (1979) and Au juste: Conversations (1979) criticized contemporary literary theories and encouraged an experimental discourse devoid of interest in truth.

Lyotard criticized traditional discourses, both at a philosophical, religious and economic level., like the Christian, the enlightened, the Marxist or the capitalist. All these metadiscourses were, in the opinion of Jean-François Lyotard, incapable of leading to liberation. Postmodern culture is characterized by disbelief in these metanarratives, invalidated by their practical effects. It is not a question of proposing an alternative system to the current one, but of acting in very diverse spaces to encourage concrete changes.

• You may be interested in: "Types of philosophy and main currents of thought"

Academic career

In addition to teaching at the Lycée de Constantine, Algeria, from 1950 to 1952, in 1972 he began teaching at the University of Paris VIII, teaching at the institution until 1987 to go on to become a professor emeritus. For the next two decades he taught classes outside of France., especially as a professor of critical theory at the University of California at Irvine and, also, as a visiting professor at universities around the world.

Among the most outstanding international universities we can find Johns Hopkins University, the University of California Berkeley, Yale University, Stony Brook University, the University of California, San Diego in the United States, the Université de Montréal in Québec (Canada) and the University of São Paulo in Brazil. He was founding director and board member of the International College of Philosophy in Paris..

last years of life

Among the latest works by Jean-François Lyotard we have those referring to the life of the French writer, activist and politician André Marlaux. One of them is a biography “Signé, Malraux” (Signed, Malraux). Another of Lyotard's late works is "La Confession d'Augustin" (The Confession of Augustine), a study in the phenomenology of time. This work remained unfinished, since he died during its writing, although it would be published posthumously the same year of his death.

In these years he repeatedly returned to the notion of postmodernism in his essays "Postmodernity Explained to Children", "Towards the Postmodern", and "Postmodern Fables". He wanted to further expound his views in a conference he was preparing in 1998, entitled "Postmodernism and Theory of Media”, but unfortunately he died unexpectedly of a rapidly advancing leukemia on April 21 of that same year. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Political life and militancy

Jean-François Lyotard's political life is intense, not only highlighting his important struggle during the France occupied by the Nazis, but also because, once the conflict was over, he mobilized for the fight socialist. in 1954 he joined the “Socialism or Barbarism” group, a French political organization formed in 1948 around the inadequacy of critical Trotskyist analysis.

The organization's main objective was to criticize Marxism from within, at the time of the Algerian war of independence. Lyotard's writings while in Algeria mainly concern far-left politics. After disputes with Cornelius Castoriadis in 1965, Lyotard left Socialism or Barbarism and entered the the group well finished forming “Pouvoir Ouvrier” (Workers Power), leaving it for only two more years late.

He actively participated in the May 1968 revolution, although he distanced himself from revolutionary Marxism by publishing his work "Libidinal Economics" (1974). Later, he would distance himself from Marxism itself because he felt that this current had too rigid a structuralist approach, and that it imposed the “systematization of desires” through a strong emphasis on industrial production as a fundamental aspect of culture predominant.

Bibliographic references

• Lyotard, J. F. (2000). The narrative function and the legitimation of knowledge. The postmodern condition. Madrid, Spain: Chair. p. 57-58. ISBN 8437604664.