Standing Problems 257example, Habermas’s idea of a possible communicative consensus. In consequence, we
remain entrapped forever in phrases. This can generate a sense of incomprehensibility.
Whatever one encounters and tries to formulate, remains in excess and outside of
that which can be comprehended. Second, on a more positive note this situation can
generate experimentation. Lyotard associates this claim with Aristotle. He observes
‘we judge without criteria. We are in the position of Aristotle’s prudent individual,
who makes judgements about the just and the unjust without the least criterion’.
Thus, judging justice, for example, is always a matter of striving out of nothing, with
no fixed rules (see Lyotard 1985: 14).^30 He calls this a ‘pagan’ standpoint, since it
judges outside of all the older metanarratives. Truths are singular, local, particular,
and multiple. The same point would apply to even apparently serious moral wrongs.
In many ways this idea of judging beyond rules, making decisions without an
established criterion, and being premised on a particular phrase regimen, with no
possibility of overcoming the differend, is once again Nietzsche’s argument concern-
ing the end of metaphysics, the birth of theübermenschand Zarathustra, and the
movement beyond good and evil. In Nietzschean terms, morality, law, politics, and
culture are underpinned by the will to power. In this scenario there will be inevitable
differences—a multiplicity of incommensurable differences. But at least the agent is
free to constitute itself as a free spirit. In Rorty and Connolly there are limits—relating
to our own ethos and society. In this sense, self-creation and self-constitution do have
boundaries. In Lyotard—as one senses in many but not all of Nietzsche’s writings—
something more disturbing is taking place. We are simply creatures of conventional
phrases. We float in a sea of these phrases, with no anchor, no land, and no sense of
direction. We are also invited to jump ship to other vessels, to experiment. However,
we should never expect to make any sense, since there is nothing to makes sense of,
except a multiplicity of phrase regimens. We can create and go on creating ourselves
endlessly. We are back here with Nietzschean nihilism and the radical arbitrariness of
signs, although exactly what this means politically remains much more obscure.
Conclusion
In discussing the aforementioned thinkers several themes emerge, which appear reg-
ularly in postmodern theory. I summarize them briefly since the more substantive
detail has already been covered in the body of this discussion. The most obvious
critical point to come out of postmodernism is a rejection of both humanism and
traditional metaphysics. Metaphysics and humanism are seen as two sides of the
same coin. The human subject (and author) is in effect decentered. The ‘idea’ of the
human self does not predate language, interpretation, or perspective. The self is a ran-
dom and arbitrary product of language. To grasp this point requires deconstruction
and/or genealogy. Genealogy and deconstruction are historically-inclined methods
that ‘show us’ the course of an idea, but not in any narrative, coherent, or chronolo-
gical sequence. History has no logic or purpose.^31 The human self is thus understood
as a creative or self-constituted phenomenon. The metaphysics of modernity and