Democracy Lyotarded – A Postmodernist Take on Culture and Education

Resumo

The article aims at introducing a new way of reading french philosopher Jean-François Lyotard in pedagogical contexts. Before doing so, in the first part, a broad outline of the contemporary debate on postmodernism and postmodern philosophy, both in academia and in pop cultural and journalistic contexts is discussed, to highlight some relevant implications of the topic. While - not alone - Lyotard’s postmodern position is blamed for corrupting and endangering democracy today by paving the way for the so-called ‘post-truth-era’, this article argues the opposite: Lyotard’s position describes a distinct possibility of how democracy is viable today, against the backdrop of globalization, plurality, and diversity. The third part of the paper presents the prevailing Lyotard reception in German-speaking educational sciences, which in a certain sense promotes the post-truth tendency by focusing on incommensurability and heterogeneity. Against this, a proposal is substantiated to focus on another important aspect of Lyotard’s philosophy: Namely, his attempts to outline a political philosophy following Kant’s aesthetic of the sublime. Thus, together with Lyotard, an attempt could be made to establish bindingness and engagement in the midst of isolation and individualization – democracy Lyotarded.