A Frenchman, a philosopher, and a literary analyst, Jean-Francois Lyotard lived from 1924 until 1998, and his legacy is still felt every time someone says "Postmodernism," since it was Lyotard who brought the term out from Art Theory and into common speech. In The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard introduced the idea of postmodernism as something that extended well beyond the arts, into society, politics, sociology and even the psychology of the human condition.
The work was published in 1979 as a retaliation against the large meta-narratives of modernism. The book represents a skepticism against meaning and value systems, and a rejection of universality or objectivity.
Perhaps this work can be seen as an extension of Lyotard's early interests with detachment, especially his academic analysis of Zen Buddhism, Taoism and Stoicism—in other words, mystic worldviews. This theory of "Indifference as an Ethical Concept" (1947) seems to coincide with Lyotard's approach to modernism and its various value systems. He seems to be leaning away from those modernist ideas in an attempt to view modernism as a rejection of the meaninglessness of life.
