Notes on The Inhuman by Jean-Fran�ois Lyotard

General Overview

A collection of solicited lectures, this book primarily concerns the nature of time. While interesting, it is unfocused (as any collection of essays must necessarily be), and only two of it’s essays have a direct bearing on the project.

Introduction: About the Human

Overview

Lyotard meditates on the nature of the human and the problems of humanism in contemporary thought. I think this is a reaction to the New Philosophy, but who can tell?

He also discusses the title of the book: the inhuman refers to two quotes (from Appollinaire and Adorno) that articulate art as the desire to become inhuman.

Quotes

1. “Which would make two sorts of inhuman. It is indispensable to keep them dissociated. The inhumanity of the system which is currently being consolidated under the name of development (among others) must not be confused with the infinitely secret one of which the soul is hostage. To believe, as happened to me, that the first can take over from the second, give it expression, is a mistake. The system rather has the consequence of causing the forgetting of what escapes it. But the anguish is that of a mind haunted by a familiar and unknown guest which is agitating it, sending it delirious but also making it think – if one claims to exclude it, if one doesn’t give it outlet, one aggravates it. Discontent grows with this civilization, foreclosure along with information” (2).