The philosophy of postmodernity as presented by Jean-François Lyotard can largely be read as a metatheoretical discourse on ideals, principles, universal concepts, and totalities, namely concerning the various forms of "transitions" between ideal and reality. On this point, philosophical postmodernity, subtle considerations by Kant notwithstanding (which remained rather ineffectual outside of philosophy), has shaken modernity or at least forced an insight into modernity's related difficulties. Modernity is the era of scientific, political, and economic systems ideologically secured by ideals, by "grand narratives," by "meta-narratives." Modernity's theoretical endeavors, however, seem powerless when their ideals are occupied, when they are confused with political reality or used as a legitimation for it; when—as Kant expressed it—the reality of an idea, which can never be an "object of possible experience," is "illicitly obtained" (erschlichen); when too quick a "transition" is found from the ought (Sollen) to the is (Sein), from practical reason to theoretical reason.
