The crisis of reason in contemporary thought: Some reflections on the arguments of postmodernism

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Abstract
Many recent thinkers imagine that a new way of life, or a new kind of thinking, is beginning to unfold on the basis of the discovery that reason is an outmoded concept and that the projects of Western philosophy are defunct. Postmodernist thinkers, in particular, have tried to describe the way things look from a post‐philosophical, post‐rational point of view. Jean‐François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition argues against the possibility of a comprehensive understanding of contemporary social and intellectual activities, while most of the essays in Literature and the Question of Philosophy (ed. Anthony J. Cascardi) also reject the idea that there can be a valid comprehension of the elements found in textual or in ethical and political phenomena. Yet in every instance, the effort to establish a post‐philosophical, post‐rational way of looking at things involves an unwitting exercise of the rational power to conceive of a situation in terms of the relative disposition of its elements. Furthermore, the themes and ideas of post‐philosophy can be shown to have originated within the two grand narratives of modern philosophy (the emancipatory and the speculative narratives) that Lyotard has incorrectly pronounced passe. Postmodemism's confusion about itself shows the continuing relevance of Hegel's concept of Reason.

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