onegoodmove

Like most of the 'profound' musings by tenured bufoons on the continent, Lyotard's claims is obviously stupid; it is self contradictory. The claim that there is no grand narrative is a grand narrative, that is to say the claim that 'everything is relative' is an objective statement and therefore results in a paradox. Lyotard's argument is false if false and either nonsense or false if true. You don't need to write full articles to criticize these people, they don't put enough thought into their work to merit it.

The quote from Strawson seems to prove Lyotard's point, at least as it is summarized here. Though people do feel confidence in existentially fundamental experiences, those experiences are not generalizable, or as Lyotard says, there is no grand narrative, no one dominating story.

I must be having an off day, because I am having a hard time digesting this piece. Am I missing something (dumb) or is it that abstract in concept?

human intercourse.

heh heh.

//I think this insight also applies to many religious people. Just because you have a profound personal experience that is extremely meaningful does not mean that experience applies to anybody else.//--norm

I once got caught up in the question of whether 'it' is 'just' a story. When people tell their tales, the listener should try to understand the tales and the teller. Narrativity is very human. Grand narrativity is inhuman. Asking someone if it is 'just' a story is asking a bit too much. It's like telling the listener to walk above the clouds, not beneath the trees. It makes no sense. Speaking narratively, I have met no person able to speak grand narratively. IT IS just a story, because we are JUST people, not gods.

Lyotard was a bad example. Strawson's argument isn't just against postmodernist, he is attacking narrativity in all its guises not just Lyotard's particular view.

Here is the abstract.

I argue against two popular claims. The first is a descriptive, empirical thesis about the nature of ordinary human experience: 'each of us constructs and lives a "narrative" . . . this narrative is us, our identities' (Oliver Sacks); 'self is a perpetually rewritten story . . . in the end, we become the autobiographical narratives by which we "tell about" our lives' (Jerry Bruner); 'we are all virtuoso novelists. . . . We try to make all of our material cohere into a single good story. And that story is our autobiography. The chief fictional character . . . of that autobiography is one's self' (Dan Dennett). The second is a normative, ethical claim: we ought to live our lives narratively, or as a story; a 'basic condition of making sense of ourselves is that we grasp our lives in a narrative' and have an understanding of our lives 'as an unfolding story' (Charles Taylor). A person 'creates his identity [only] by forming an autobiographical narrative a story of his life', and must be in possession of a full and 'explicit narrative [of his life] to develop fully as a person' (Marya Schechtman).

I must create a new category other than the ones listed by Strawson. I believe that we do see our lives in the form of a narrative, but that this form is free of an ethical connotation, being neither "good" nor "bad." Personally, I find such labels to be inapplicable to how one collects, views and arranges data/experience of oneself in these terms. My one reservation in claiming that all people see themselves in the form of a narrative is that of my own cultural bias. Perhaps I and others I know were taught how to put experiences together in this fashion and it is now so integral to my idea of self that I cannot imagine a human being able to do anything but. Imagine a person on a deserted island, away from any form of culture. It seems logical that the person would perhaps form a more Episodic self-experience (maybe helped along by lack of variation), but would it necessarily be non-narrative? Must someone be exposed to the narrative style to adapt it, or can it easily and/or naturally be developed alone?

I also have a problem with the idea that people are either Diachronic or Episodic. I believe that state is very much a sliding scale. I am more Diachronic in my self-experience, but I have some very Episodic experience as well. I don't feel my Episodic nature affects my Narrative one. Even those detached pieces are part of my narrative sense. I suppose I could wrestle them out the way the author does, but I don't feel a need to. While they are a different type of self-experience they still go into my narrative because I simply know they do. They perhaps fall in less naturally than the Diachronic experience, but that is where they fall nonetheless. Does the change in time and experience of I* make it any less or more you? There is also the possibility that I am approaching Narrativity from a different vantage point than the author, as I have problems imagining people who are Diachronic but non-Narrative unless they just don't examine their lives at all. Very thought provoking piece.

Thanks for clearing that up :)

(still shrugging shoulders)

Is the US Constitution a 'grand narrative' that dominates the US? Or is an Originalist's interpretation of the Constition trying to dominate the US? What the hell is a grand narrative? I can't access that cited article.

Forget about the 'grand narrative' it was just an example of a philosopher who uses the idea of narrative. The article isn't specifically about Lyotard. I have posted the abstract in a comment above.