Famous Last Words

"In the end, it's not the years in your life that counts, it's the life in your years"

"I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end."

-Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States of America

The final reading that I was assigned to read for Honors Literature 212 was Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge; more specifically, I have studied Ch.8 The Narrative Function and the Legitimation of Knowledge. In this section Lyotard describes that in his search for knowledge he desires that science and facts be separated from narratives. In other words, when discoveries are made and truth is derived from these facts, they are almost instantly added to a grand narrative of what they represent and how they fit into previously devised theories and philosophies of what the world is and should be. Though society has largely moved away from these, we are still prone to wander back to meta-narratives which, according to Lyotard, create unrealistic societal expectations and subvert the legitimation of knowledge. He notes that to even describe this process requires some sort of narrative style explanation. In fact, he finds it hard to escape narratives at all when it seems that he really just wants to get at straight, unadulterated knowledge. Just the facts, no emotional ties to confuse them and no deep desires to subvert them. As a matter of fact, he cites Plato and Aristotle as primary influences for what he calls "modern thinking." Lyotard is a man of statistics and factual evidence, not grand epics of thought and movement, and for that I only have one thing to say...

Sucks to be you.

Lyotard's way of thinking is twisted because he is assuming that story can be separated from statistics and narrative separated from truth, when in fact they are all inseparable. Narrative is not something that can just be deconstructed and removed from human thought because we are wired to think in narratives. Machines can look at Lyotard's kinds of facts easily without considering the grand picture, but what makes man great is his ability to imagine and perceive greater things beyond just the raw data that we find through science, because narratives are a science in themselves. Yes, there have been some terrible metanarratives, such as Marxism and Nazism, but w/out narratives there would be no stories or philosophy at all, which would put Lyotard out of a job. Besides, as a professor, is he not supposed to formulate his teaching plan into some sort of narrative that he can express to his students rather than just give them straight data, because he knows full well that the former is the only way they will learn. Also, the idea that narratives hinder the legitimation of knowledge is ridiculous. I venture to say that I have learned some of my greatest life lessons from Lord of the Rings and Star Wars and those will define my search for knowledge far more than this book ever will. This is possible because narratives speak to the human heart and mind more than anything else - they are not just a part of life but are as integral to it as music and breath.

If there's one thing I've learned throughout Honors, it's that there is actually a huge narrative that has begun since the Fall of Man. The same problems that we deal with now (truth vs false, reason vs passion, stale vs energy, love vs hate, etc.) have been debated all throughout history in a wide variety of ways and it's not going to stop any time soon. Life often moves in cycles, and there will always be new facts and new questions that arise to challenge the common perceptions. Lyotard has brought his challenges to the challenges he sees, and myself and many others have come to challenge him. So while things do not necessarily change in this world, there is always new beauty and new possibilities to be found, and in the death of Christ we find truth and and life that we cannot find anywhere else, and that's something I wonder if Lyotard realizes. We cannot have a soul without narratives! Never forget that God spoke this world into existence and made us individually; we were designed to have our own stories within His own. That's what those quotes above are about - the all-encompassing search that defines our lives and the story that creates, interwoven with many different others whether we realize it or not. That's why Socrates will always be my favorite philosopher, because he recognized the grander designs of our existence and never stopped searching for those truths, even unto his death. So to conclude this blog I quote the great searcher himself: "The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him."

Thank you for reading, please comment as you please. I commented on Nick Hampton's Education???