利奧塔將康德的審美理論放在當代文化語境中進行檢驗,發現在意識形態、技術科學等宏大敘事的作用之下,美感已經不再是知性和想象力之間的自由游戲狀態,對美的審美也變成了"被準許的"和"現實主義的"。利奧塔因而致力于對宏大敘事的批判,要求藝術只有超越可辨認的表象,表現"不可表現之物",才能突破宏大敘事的結構。于是,他與先鋒派藝術聯合,并求助于多種理論資源,闡發出一套后現代崇高美學。利奧塔相信,當代文化中的審美活動只能在后現代的崇高美學中恢復。而以審美為代表的反思也是人類所特有的不同于技術的思維方式,它既是美學也是倫理學的基礎,只有它才能使人類保持思想的自由。因此,利奧塔將崇高感視為一種倫理情感,并在美學的基礎上建立了關于義務的倫理學理論。

Applying the aesthetic theory of Immanuel Kant into contemporary cultural context,Jean-Franois Lyotard finds that due to grand narratives such as ideology and technological sciences,aesthetic feeling is no longer a free play of understanding and imagination,and aesthetics has become something"permitted"and"realistic". Lyotard criticizes grand narratives,claiming that art could break up the framework of grand narratives only if it jettisons the limits of recognizable representations and presents"the unpresentable". Lyotard therefore integrates avant-garde art as well as other theories into his postmodern aesthetics of the sublime. He believes that free aesthetic activities of contemporary culture could only be realized with the postmodern sublime.Moreover,reflection represented by aesthetic activities,according to Lyotard,is a unique human mentality different from technoscience,which,as he holds,is the basis for aesthetics and ethics,and could keep human thoughts free. Hence Lyotard regards the sense of the sublime as an ethic feeling,and forms his ethic theory about obligation based on aesthetics.