Article(print)1998

Bringing It All Back Home: Reason in the Twilight of Foundationalism

In: Constellations: an international journal of critical and democratic theory, Volume 5, Issue 3, p. 369-380

Nicholson, Linda

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Abstract

Advocates the full acceptance of a pragmatic model of rationality & final rejection of the foundationalist belief in context-independent principles & explores how such a move manages the problem of relativism. It is argued that abandoning the idea of ultimately grounded principles does not represent a loss of rationality, only an overthrow of the assertion that has been made by Immanuelle Kant, Jurgen Habermas (eg, 1990), & Seyla Benhabib (eg, 1992) that intercontextual or at least philosophically established principles of rationality exist. Further, a pragmatic model of rationality that insists that principles are always created & interpreted in specific human contexts does not mean that all points of view are equally right, simply that a particular perspective cannot be disproved across contexts. It is concluded that philosophy cannot unite humanity with universals regardless of how appealing such a project may be. E. Blackwell

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