Soft universalism as a way of overcoming repressions in the language

The paper considers the problem of overcoming repressions, which are produced by the scientific and philosophical systems, which are pretending to be universal. Repressions originate from the position of the classical universalism that all the knowledge must be incorporated in rigorous system. In its turn, a system is legitimized by a metanarrative. Ideas, which are not blended with the universal requirements, drop out from the «normal» scientific or philosophical knowledge.In order to overcome repressions, produced by universalism, Lyotard and Rorty suggest anti-universalistic approaches. In this paper were analyzed conceptions of the local language games, which mainly concentrated around the idea of defending the heterogeneity and uniqueness of all discourses. Nevertheless, in such conceptions there are ontological and ethical presuppositions, which could be qualified as universalistic. Thus, however, such universalism could be marked as «soft», because even though it presupposes some sort of general conditions, they are not becoming a philosophical foundation in the classical sense. The paper shows, that they mainly served for providing a prevention of repressions and they focused on the differences maintenance. Nonetheless, because of denying of the strong universalism, Lyotard and Rorty don't achieve a general elimination of repressions. Therefore, their concepts appeal rather to the ethical identity of each participator of all language games.

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