Introduction

Abstract

This book is the first volume of a two-part study of the significance of Greek thought in the work of Jean-François Lyotard. The second volume examines Lyotard’s interpretations of Aristotle. It is the aim of this book to examine Lyotard’s interpretations of sophistry. In part, it is my intention to show that Lyotard’s concept of the differend is articulated by way of a positive appropriation of sophistry. For reasons that I will make apparent in what follows, this, I hope, will in itself be of some importance to the continuing study of Lyotard’s thought and the deepening appreciation of its philosophical significance. Beyond this, however, my intention is to demonstrate that Lyotard attempts to determine the possibilities and limitations of philosophy as such by way of an interpretation of its relation to sophistry.