SOURCE: “Epistemologies of Postmodernism: A Rejoinder to Jean-François Lyotard,” in New German Critique, No. 33, Fall, 1984, pp. 103-26.

In the following essay, Benhabib traces the history and development of Lyotard's philosophy of language, and argues that it tends to justify a retreat from critical social judgments.

In the recent, flourishing debate on the nature and significance of postmodernism, architecture appears to occupy a special place.¹ It is tempting to describe this situation through a Hegelianism: it is as if the Zeitgeist of an epoch approaching its end has reached self-consciousness in those monuments of modern architecture of steel, concrete, and glass. Contemplating itself in its objectifications, Spirit has not “recognized” and thus “returned to itself,” but has recoiled in horror from its own products. The visible decay of our urban environment, the uncanniness of the modern megalopolis, and the general dehumanization of space appear to prove the Faustian...