Lyotard and Greek Thought

Lyotard and Greek Thought

Lyotard and Greek Thought Sophistry Keith Crome Lecturer in Philosophy Manchester Metropolitan University

Keith Crome 2004 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2004 978-1-4039-1238-1 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-51103-7 ISBN 978-0-230-00602-7 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230006027 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Crome, Keith, 1965 Lyotard and Greek thought : sophistry / Keith Crome. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Lyotard, Jean François. 2. Sophists (Greek philosophy) I. Title. B2430.L964C76 2004 183.1 dc22 2004042735 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04

To Emma, Tilly and Rose

Contents Abbreviations Acknowledgements viii x Introduction 1 Part I The Place of Sophistry in Philosophy 11 1 The Sophists 13 2 Hegel and the Sophists 42 3 Heidegger and Sophistry 62 Part II Lyotard and the Sophistication of Philosophy 85 4 Lyotard and Sophistry 87 5 Lyotard and Kant: A Sophistical Critique 107 6 Lyotard and the Sophistication of Ontology 122 7 A Sophistical Differend 146 Conclusion 159 Notes 163 Select Bibliography 176 Index 184 vii

Abbreviations Full details of all texts can be found in the bibliography. G. W. F. Hegel EL HP I HP II HP III Hegel s Logic: Being Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Vol. 1, Greek Philosophy to Plato Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Vol. 2, Plato and the Platonists Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Vol. 3, Medieval and Modern Philosophy M. Heidegger AWP BPP BT HG MFL N IV PS The Age of the World Picture Basic Problems of Phenomenology Being and Time Hegel and the Greeks The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic Nietzsche, Vol. IV, Nihilism Plato s Sophist J.-F. Lyotard D DF DMF DP JG LR NS OSW P PMC SFF TPM The Differend Discours, figure Dérive à partir de Marx et Freud Des dispositifs pulsionnels Just Gaming The Lyotard Reader Cinq cours de 1975 sur Nietzsche et les Sophistes On the Strength of the Weak Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event The Postmodern Condition Sur la force des faibles Towards the Post-Modern viii

Abbreviations ix I. Kant CJ CPR Critique of Judgement Critique of Pure Reason Others DK EGP MXG OS SP Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker edited by H. Diels and W. Kranz Early Greek Philosophy edited by J. Barnes On Melissus, Xenophanes and Gorgias in Aristotle s Minor Works The Older Sophists: A Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker edited by Diels-Kranz with a new edition of Antiphon and of Euthydemus Si Parménide: Le traité anonyme De Melisso, Xenophane, Gorgia by Barbara Cassin

Acknowledgements The support of a number of people has been indispensable to the writing of this book and it is a pleasure to acknowledge that here. I would like to thank my colleagues at Manchester Metropolitan University for their encouragement and advice. I would like to thank Martin Bell who ensured that I was in a position to work on this book when without his help I might not have been. Mike Garfield persisted in asking awkward, but necessary questions about sophistry, and whilst he cannot be held in anyway responsible for the shortcomings of my account, without his forcing me to think about the matters he raised it would not be what it is. My thanks should also go to James Williams for his encouragement and inspiration. I would also like to thank Jennifer Nelson at Palgrave Macmillan for her support and understanding. I am deeply indebted to Mark Sinclair and Ulli Haase. What I owe to them both is difficult to measure. I doubt very much that either would subscribe unequivocally or without reservation to any of the views expressed in this book, but the many philosophical conversations that I have shared with them have shaped it, and their friendship has sustained me whilst writing it. My greatest debt is to my family, they have tolerated my prolonged unsociability and without their love this book could not have been written, and I would not have wanted to write it. An early version of Chapter 4 first appeared under the title Retorsion: Jean-François Lyotard s Reading of Sophistry in The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XLI, No. 1, Spring 2003, 29 44. Parts of Chapter 6 were published in the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 32, No. 3, October 2001 as The Sophistications of Philosophy, 277 99. x