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Classics

The Postmodern Condition by Jean-François Lyotard

Mike Sutton discusses Jean-François Lyotard’s classic report on The Postmodern Condition.

The Postmodern Condition, published in 1979, was commissioned by the Council of Universities of the Provincial Government of Quebec. It is a report on the state of knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge, in the contemporary world, by the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard (1924-98).

In this book, Lyotard considers knowledge, including its ubiquity. His concern here is prescient, given computerisation’s pervasive influence on our lives in the half century since his report.

Knowledge in philosophy is concerned centrally with metaphysics and epistemology: ‘What can we know?’ and ‘How do we know?’ respectively.

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