Why Philosophize? by Jean-Francois Lyotard - 9780745670737

John Wiley and Sons Ltd

Why Philosophize?Author(s): Jean-Francois Lyotard\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Polity Press\nISBN-13: 9780745670737, 978-0745670737\nSynopsis\nWhy Philosophize? is a series of lectures given by Jean-Franois Lyotard to students at the Sorbonne embarking on their university studies. The circumstances obliged him to be both clear and concise: at the same time, his lectures offer a profound and far-reaching meditation on how essential it is to philosophize in a world where philosophy often seems irrelevant, outdated, or inconclusive. Lyotard begins by drawing on Plato, Proust and Lacan to show that philosophy is a never-ending desire - for wisdom, for the other. In the second lecture he draws on Heraclitus and Hegel to explore the close relation between philosophy and history: the same restlessness, the same longing for a precarious unity, drives both. In his third lecture, Lyotard examines how philosophy is a form of utterance, both c.