Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 13:25:09 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: [Fwd: The scandal of obligation]


To: William

Re: Wittgenstein

Admittedly Lyotard draws on the late Wittgenstein for the Differend.  (I also
believe he drew on the early Wittgenstein for his theory of the sublime -
Whereof one can not speak, thereof one must be silent)

However, the Differend is still closer to Marx than to Wittgenstein in its
understanding of conflict, in my opinion.  Wittgenstein, influenced by
Schopenhauer, tended towards a subjective, psychoanalytical view of these
things.  (The solution to the problems of existence are seen in the vanishing
of the problem)  This certainly remains in the late Wittgenstein as well.
 There is an overriding sense in which language only needs to be analyzed and
the problems will vanish through a kind of consensus.  The problems posed by
Wittgenstein regarding language games is a philosohical one; never a
political one. There is no real sense of how language games legitimize power
in unequal relatationships. There is no real awareness of how power
unconsciously structures the very scope of the game itself; what is and isn't
permitted for discussion.  Everything in Wittgenstein becomes the positivism
of semantics.  

The virtue of Lyotard is that he reads Wittgenstein in the light of Marx.  I
don't think he believes in the politics of consensus. He believes instead in
conflict and not in better communication.