This document summarizes Lyotard's discussion of the two major narratives of legitimizing knowledge - the political narrative and philosophical narrative. The political narrative frames knowledge as a means to promote humanity's freedom, while the philosophical narrative presents science as legitimate based on its own logic and reason. However, Lyotard argues that in postmodern society, these grand narratives have lost credibility due to technological changes and the individualism of advanced capitalism. Specifically, he questions whether science can truly be "for its own sake" if it also aims to promote a specific idea of morality. Ultimately, Lyotard asserts that knowledge may be better defined as a speculative language game defined by its own rules rather than as a pursuit of real truth.

1. The Postmodern
Condition:
A Report on Knowledge
Presentedby zartab

2. Legitimation of the
Knowledge
In the present book Lyotard has discussed two major versions
of the narrative of the legitimation
• Political
• Philosophical

3. First Narrative of
Legitimation
“The subject of the first version is humanity as the hero of
freedom.
All people have a right to science. If social subject is not
already the subject of scientific Knowledge , it is because
that has been forbidden by the priest and tyrants.”(includes
both political and religious discourse)

4. Process of legitimation
Use education as the tool for legitimation.
“This narrative would be directed more towards the politics
of primary education ,rather than of universities and high
schools.”
1 example,
“The educational policy of the French Third Republic “
School system in keeping with government policies or
school as institutes to propagate policies of government.

5. Process of legitimation
2 Example, measures adopted by Napoleon motivated by
the desire to produce the administrative and professional
skills necessary for the stability of the state.
In the context of the narrative of the freedom ,”the state
receive its legitimacy not from itself but from the people”.
3 Example, imperial politics behind the institutes of
education.

6. Process of legitimation
Narrative of freedom as educational discourse .
Training of people according that narrative.
Legitimation of narrative by the people.
“The state resort to the narrative of freedom every time it
assumes direct control over the training of the “people",
under the name of the “nation", in order to point them
down the path of progress”.

7. Legitimation:
Philosophical
Second narrative of legitimation is science the philosophical
version .
Scientific discourse is presented as free from authority ,
tradition or dogma as knowledge based on logic , reason
and empiricism.
Presented as “science for its own sake”
That version find its legitimation from itself .
This narrative position science as a path to morality , ethical
action , and spirituality.

8. Second narrative of
legitimation
It is first appears with the founding , between 1807 and
1810, of the university of Berlin, whose influence on the
organization of higher education was to be considerable in
the 19 and 20 centuries.
Founded by Wilhelm Humboldt .
Whose model of education was based on two ideas of
enlightenment:
• Student as an autonomous individual
• As a citizen of world.
By developing their own reasoning powers in an
environment of academic freedom.

9. Second narrative of
legitimation
At the time of university's creation , the Prussian ministry
had before it a project conceived by Fichte, founder of
German Idealism , and counterproposals by Schleiermacher,
father of modern theology “Doctrine of scientific
Knowledge”.
This shows that “science is not for its own sake” but for the
sake of legitimizing the philosophy behind it.

10. Second narrative of
legitimation
“it has been necessary to elucidate the philosophy that
legitimate the foundation of the university of Berlin was
meant to be the motor of both its development and the
development of contemporary knowledge” . As many
countries in the 19th and 20th centuries adopted this
university organization as a model for the foundation and
reform of their higher education system.

11. Another important point to note is on one side the idea is
“science for its own sake” and on the other side science is
presented as a path to morality.
If science has to perform that task then how it can be for it’s
own sake…..
Here we can spot science as legitimating a specific idea of
morality.

12. Delegitimation
“In contemporary society and culture__ postindustrial
society ,post-modern culture, the question of legitimation
of knowledge formulated in different terms. The grant
narrative has lost its credibility , regardless of what mode of
unification it uses , regardless of whether it is a speculative
narrative or a narrative of emancipation” .

13. The decline of the narrative can be seen as an effect of the
blossoming of the techniques and technologies , since the
second World War , which has shifted emphasis from the
ends of the action to its means; it can also be seen as an
effect of the redeployment of advanced liberal capitalism
after its retreat under the protection of Keynesianism
during the period of 1930-60,a renewal that has eliminated
the communist alternative and valorized the individual
enjoyment of goods and services.”

14. grand narrative of 19th
century
Lyotard questions the legitimation of grand narrative of 19th
century by locating the seed of deligitimation inherent in it.
“The speculative apparatus maintains an ambiguous
relation to knowledge. It shows that knowledge is only
worthy of that name to the extent that it reduplicates
itself(lifts itself up)by citing its own statements in a second-
level discourse (autonomy)that functions to legitimate
them”.

15. A science that has not legitimated itself is not a true science
; if the discourse that was meant to legitimate it seems to
belong to a prescientific form of knowledge , like a “vulgar”
narrative ,it is demoted t the lowest rank , that of an
ideology or instrument of power.
Science’s rule of “empirical” applied to itself too.

16. “A scientific statement is knowledge if and only if it can take
its place in a universal process of engendering”
But “all it has to do is to presuppose that such a process
exists and that it is itself an expression of that process. This
presupposition , in fact , is indispensible to the speculative
language game. Without it , the language of legitimation
would not be legitimate ; it would accompany science in a
nosedive into nonsense , at least if we take it idealism’s
word for it.”

17. Here presupposition defines the set of rules one must
accept in order to play the speculative game.
Science can better be defined as a speculative game that is
defined by a certain set of rules.
Can say knowledge has nothing to do with what is real
knowledge is just a game of language .