Liberal Democracy as the End of History: Fukuyama and Postmodern Challenges by Christopher Hughes

Author:Christopher Hughes [Hughes, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, History & Theory
ISBN: 9781136624971
Google: TV-pAgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17548737
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-12-25T00:00:00+00:00

A Politics in The Absence of the Human

In the previous section, I used Fukuyama’s human as the basis for producing a non-totalising account of the human and to show that what makes us alike is that we are all different. I have shown that in the absence of a universal and homogeneous conception of the human, we must think of the ‘human’ as a diverse heterogeneity of individuals. I argued there is no ‘Factor X’ for ‘humanness’, except possessing the range of factors/characteristics of ‘humanness’. I concluded that to be human is to have a multitude of desires and each individual experiences being human in a unique way, prioritising the various human desires differently. In this section, I move on to discuss the political consequences of this notion of the human, and ask: if we are all unique, how can we proceed to find a social/political system which emancipates this individuality, plurality, individualism and individual difference?

Lyotard argues that we cannot do justice to ‘difference’,96 since ‘difference’ represents an incommensurability between discourses. This does not mean that Lyotard wants to do away with politics, political action, justice, ethics or deciding, but he does argue that ‘claims for political justice, in terms of freedom, social justice [etc] … appear to be subject to conflict precisely because there are no ultimate yardsticks to which a final appeal can be made’.97 As Smart argues, for Lyotard, justice/ethics do not correspond to reality – there is nothing ontological on which we can base justice/ethics – it is an open question, which cannot be answered with models.98 Thus, there are no criteria to determine just/unjust, and in the absence of such criteria we reach judgments about what is just, but these judgments are simply that – they are judgments, something decided/said about what is just, but this judgment does not correspond to what is just in any objective way.99

For Lyotard, we just can’t get away from the differend,100 incommensurability101 and the heterogeneity of phrases/discourses. He argues there is an ‘impossibility of subjecting them to a single law’,102 since each discourse presents a ‘mode of presenting a universe and one mode is not translatable into another’.103 For Lyotard, the incommensurability between different notions of justice produces a differend, since the differend is, by definition, a situation where what is just cannot be ‘sorted out’. Lyotard discusses the Nuremberg Trials as an example of the differend. Nuremberg represents an incommensurability between the language games played by the judges and those on trial. Nuremberg was supposed to establish the existence of a crime, but there was a lack of consensus – the ‘criminal’ saw the judge merely as a criminal who was in a more fortunate position, and had better arms, than himself.104 Lyotard’s point is complicated but the argument I wish to take from his discussion on the differend is the idea that the ‘criminals’ did not recognise their guilt or the legitimacy of the Court – the two sides were speaking in incommensurable language games and this could not be resolved due to a lack of a rule for making a judgment between their arguments.

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