This article reconstructs Jean-François Lyotard’s theory of the sublime in contemporary art, focusing on his claim that such art ‘presents’ the unpresentable, and tracing its origins in Kant’s account of the sublime. I propose that Lyotard identifies a difficulty concerning Kant’s account: to understand why the disparate elements in the experience of the sublime (idea of reason, sensible representation) should be synthesized to form that experience. Lyotard recasts this difficulty as a pragmatic problem for artistic practice – how to ‘testify’ to the absolute in a non-absolute, sensibly perceivable object (the artwork) – that can be understood to drive avant-garde artistic experimentation.

This article uses Ronald Dworkin's argument for the unity of value to explore the redemptive core of modern legal order. Dworkin establishes a formal unity: all legal claims reside within a linked framework of moral justification. However, Jean-Francois Lyotard's concept of the differend exposes a lingering gap. Arguments within a moral universe do inevitably converge, but such unity is only possible due to the formative violence enacted by such orders. Dworkin hopes to provide the definitive statement against moral subjectivity, but in its purest form, he proves precisely the opposite. The lesson to draw from Dworkin's work is that ‘justice’ is ultimately only the means by which political orders categorize and thereby sustain their own formative acts of exclusion under the guise of offering their redemption.

In this paper, I relativize the widespread representation of the generalized relativism of 1970s philosophy. I will show how the group of thinkers of this period often referred to as the ‘French Theory’ movement is not always defined by the affirmation of a radical relativism, but rather by the obstinate search for an original ‘reality’ (as thing in itself) capable of competing and denouncing the false ‘reality’ constructed by reason. To demonstrate this, I will focus on the journey of a philosopher who is emblematic of this period, namely Jean-François Lyotard. I will demonstrate that Lyotard claims a form of realism, which I will qualify as ‘tragic realism.’ Then, I will compare this ‘tragic realism’ with the more contemporary forms of realism (speculative, phenomenological, etc.).