Jean-Francois Lyotard and Emergence of Postmodern Social Sciences: Theoretical Contexts and Paradigm Foundations

The development of postmodern perspective has been considered as one of the most challenging approaches over a few last decades. Many scholars maintain that postmodernism could be defined as fourth paradigms of social sciences after positivist, interpretive and critical social science. The emergence and development of this novel approach has great influences on the basics and essentials of many fields of humanities and social sciences during contemporary period. In this respect, the French scholar, Jean-Francois Lyotard, has had a major contribution in what is now could be called as postmodern social sciences. This Paper has tried to investigate the intellectual contexts of Lyotard theoretical enterprise and his contribution in development of postmodern social sciences; It also explores the paradigm foundations of Lyotard postmodern perspective including of his ontology, epistemology and methodology in a critical assessment.