ABSTRACT
The main problem about such a position is, as we said before, that truth is equated with the imposition of one perspective over others: truth as the power to assert. When truth becomes identified with violence, however, there is no space left for critique or for the idea of justice to the repressed, which, one way or the other, Lyotard wants to maintain. As A.Honneth has argued,194 there is an implicit contradiction in such a move, as Lyotard, the postmodern critic of truth, is actually claiming that there is a truth that has been repressed and which therefore must be heard, in the name of justice. Although Lyotard would probably question such a formulation of his position, in so far as it flattens the playfulness, diversity and ambiguity of language he wants to retain, he could not question the proximity of his work to the ideals of truth and justice present in the project of the philosophers of modernity. Still, the paradox and contradiction which Honneth questions are, for Lyotard, probably welcomed and enjoyed with the laughter of the sophist. The conversations Lyotard had with Thébaud on judgement and justice came out in France under the title Au Juste. In French, this had the double meaning of ‘more exactly’ and ‘addressed to the just’. This mixture of truth and justice is another
example of the mischievous tricks favoured by Lyotard, the disciple of Hermes. The English translator, faced with such an impossible task, managed to keep the ideas of the just and justice as linked to play and language games (Just Gaming). This is Lyotard’s spirit, more so because the book is not ‘just’ a game, it is a reflection on justice which, at the same time, opens up new meanings with laughter. The laughter should not divert us, however, from realizing that the interest of an author such as Lyotard is that he is, maybe unwillingly and maybe even unwittingly (though he wishes precisely to allow for what is unintended and unknown), very close to the project of emancipation of the modernity tradition that he so criticizes.
