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HETEROLOGY: A POSTMODERN THEORY OF FOUNDATIONS
Author(s) -
FAIRLAMB HORACE L.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
metaphilosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 35
eISSN - 1467-9973
pISSN - 0026-1068
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9973.1996.tb00217.x
Subject(s) - epistemology , relativism , postmodernism , foundationalism , philosophy , ideal (ethics) , sociology
Epistemology has traditionally sought to discover the foundations of knowledge. Recently, anti‐foundational philosophers have construed epistemo‐logy's failure to discover an ultimate ground to indicate the bankruptcy of foundational theory. On closer examination, however, the history of epistemology reveals the aim of foundational theory to be different both from the reductive ideal of its traditional defenders and from the unsystematic relativism that its recent critics offer instead. An alternative history of foundational theory reveals a progress toward multiple necessary foundations which is the task of epistemology to articulate.