Editing Postmodernism (section)

===A crisis of legitimacy===
At the center of the intellectual debate about postmodernism is the question of what, if anything, grounds theory. What establishes that a statement is true or that an action is right? This foundational debate is most prominently on display in Habermas's rejoinder to Lyotard's anti-foundational, postmodern challenge to Habermas's own foundational version of modernism.{{sfn|Poster|1989|pages=12–16}}

==== ''The Postmodern Condition'' ====
[[File:Jean-Francois Lyotard cropped.jpg|thumb|Philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, photo by [[Bracha L. Ettinger]], 1995]]
[[Jean-François Lyotard]] is credited with being the first to use the term "postmodern" in a philosophical context. This appeared in his 1979 ''[[{{As written|The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge<!--full title on first use-->}}]]''. In this influential work, Lyotard provided the following definition: "Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives".{{sfn|Lyotard|1984|p=xxiv}}{{efn|{{lang|fr|Le métarécit}}, sometimes also {{lang|fr|grand récit}}, "grand narrative"}}

By "metanarratives", Lyotard meant such overarching narrative frameworks as those provided by [[Christianity]], [[G. W. F. Hegel]], and [[Karl Marx]] that unite and determine our basic sense of our place and significance in the world.{{sfn|Herwitz|2008|loc=Theories of the Postmodern}} It was his early disillusionment with his early Marxism that would later be generalized into the universal claim about metanarratives.{{sfn|Gratton|2018|loc=§1}} In a society with no unifying narrative, he argued, we are left with heterogeneous, group-specific narratives (or "[[Language game (philosophy)|language games]]", as adopted from [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]]{{sfn|Buchanan|2018}}) with no universal perspective from which to adjudicate among them.{{sfn|Aylesworth|2015|loc=§2 The Postmodern Condition}}

According to Lyotard, this introduced a general crisis of legitimacy, a theme he adopts from the philosopher [[Jürgen Habermas]], whose theory of [[communicative rationality]] Lyotard rejected.{{sfn|Bertens|1995|p=111}}{{sfn|Lyotard|1984|pages=65–66}} While he was particularly concerned in that report with the way that this insight undermined claims of scientific objectivity, Lyotard's argument undermines the entire principle of transcendent legitimization.{{sfn|Bertens|1995|pages=119–21}}{{sfn|Lyotard|1984|pages=xxiii–xxv}} Instead, proponents of a language game must make the case for their legitimacy with reference to such considerations as efficiency or practicality.{{sfn|Buchanan|2018}} Far from celebrating the apparently relativistic consequences of this argument, however, Lyotard focused much of his subsequent work on how links among games could be established, particularly with respect to ethics and politics.{{sfn|Gratton|2018|loc=§§3.2–3.4}}

====The philosophical criticism of Jürgen Habermas====
The philosopher [[Jürgen Habermas]], a prominent critic of philosophical postmodernism, argued in his 1985 work ''[[The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity]]''{{efn|This volume is an extension of his 1980 speech "Modernity—An Unfinished Project", published the next year as "Modernity versus Postmodernity". Even though Lyotard is not treated directly, Habermas describes the work as an explicit response to Lyotard's challenges to the theory of [[communicative rationality]].{{sfn|Habermas|1990|p=xix}}}} that postmodern thinkers were caught in a performative contradiction, more specifically, that their critiques of modernity rely on concepts and methods that are themselves products of modern reason.{{sfn|Aylesworth|2015|loc=§9}}

Habermas criticized these thinkers for their rejection of the subject and their embrace of experimental, avant-garde strategies. He asserted that their critiques of modernism ultimately lead to a longing for the very subject they seek to dismantle. Habermas also took issue with postmodernists' leveling of the distinction between philosophy and literature. He argued that such rhetorical strategies undermine the importance of argument and [[communicative rationality|communicative reason]].{{sfn|Aylesworth|2015|loc=§9}}

Habermas's critique of postmodernism set the stage for much of the subsequent debate by clarifying some of its key underlying issues. According to scholar Gary Aylesworth – against those who would dismiss postmodernist discourse as simple nonsense – the fact that Habermas was "able to read postmodernist texts closely and discursively testifies to their intelligibility". His engagement with their ideas has led some postmodern philosophers, following Lyotard, to similarly engage with Habermas's criticisms.{{sfn|Aylesworth|2015|loc=§9}}