Jean-François Lyotard was born 1924 in Versaille, France. Lyotard became agrégé in philosophy in 1950 and received his Docteur ès lettres in 1971. After ten years of teaching philosophy in secondary schools (in Constantine, Algeria from 1950 to 1952), twenty years of teaching and research in higher education (Sorbonne, Nanterre, CNRS, Vincennes), and twelve years of theoretical and practical work devoted to the group Socialisme ou barbarie, and later for Pouvoir ouvrier, he taught philosophy at the University of Paris-VIII (Vincennes, Saint-Denis). Lyotard was a council member and founding director, at the Collège International de Philosophie, Paris, Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris, Visiting Professor at Yale University, and other universities in the USA, Canada, South America, and Europe, and was for several years Professor of Critical Theory at the University of California, Irvine. He moved from that position to Emory University in Atlanta, where he was Professor of French and Philosophy, and he was University Professor Emeritus of the University of Paris VIII.

Although a political activist of Marxist persuasion in the 1950s and 1960s, Lyotard became the non-Marxist philosopher of postmodernity in the 1980s. Postmodernity thus marks a fundamental disengagement from the kind of totalitarian thought Marxism (and not only Marxism) represents. Lyotard's truly innovative (or experiential) thinking - and certainly the thinking for which he has become renowned – is particularly exemplified in two books: 'The Postmodern Condition', and 'The Differend'.

Lyotard's 'The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge' (1979) is often said to represent the beginning of Postmodern thought. Lyotard examines knowledge, science, and technology in advanced capitalist societies. Here, the very notion of society as a form of unicity (as in national identity) is judged to be losing credibility. Society as unicity whether conceived as an organic whole (Durkheim), or as a functional system (Parsons), or as a fundamentally divided whole composed of two opposing classes (Marx) - is no longer credible in light of a growing 'incredulity towards' legitimating metanarratives. Such metanarratives (for example: every society exists for the good of its members) provide a teleology legitimating both the social bond and the role of science and knowledge in relation to it. A metanarrative, then, provides a 'credible` purpose for action, science, or society at large.

At a more technical level, a science is modern if it tries to legitimate its own rules through reference to a metanarrative - that is, a narrative outside its own sphere of competence. Two influential metanarratives are the idea that knowledge is produced for its own sake (this was typical of German idealism), and the idea that knowledge was produced for a people-subject in quest of emancipation. The proof is deemed to be universally valid because reality is deemed to be a universe (a totality) that can be represented, or expressed in symbolic form. However, even in physics no such universe exists which can be put fully into symbolic form. Rather, any statement that lays claim to universality can be quickly shown to be only part of the universe it claims to describe. Postmodernity implies that these goals of knowledge are now contested, and, furthermore, that no ultimate proof is available for settling disputes over these goals.

Later, with the publication of his essay 'Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?' in 1982, Lyotard addresses the debate about the Enlightenment. he argues that all aspects of modern societies rely on 'grand narratives,' or a sort of meta-theory that searches to explain the belief system that exists. These metanarratives represent totalizing explanations of things like Christianity or Marxism – dominant modes of thought. For Lyotard, the Enlightenment project constitutes another attempt at authoritative explanation. Thus, Lyotard bases his definition of Postmodernism on the idea that postmodernist thought questions, critiques, and deconstructs metanarratives by observing that the move to create order or unity always creates disorder as well. Instead of 'grand narratives,' which seek to explain all totalizing thought, Lyotard calls for a series of mini-narratives that are "provisional, contingent, temporary, and relative."Lyotard is best known to English-speakers for his analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition. A key figure in contemporary French philosophy, his interdisciplinary discourse covers a wide variety of topics. Lyotard maintained in 'The Differend' that human discourses occur in any number of discrete and incommensurable realms, none of which is privileged to pass judgment on the success or value of any of the others.