Overcoming Foundations

Book excerpt: First published in 1989, Overcoming Foundations offers a challenge to both postmodernism and traditional doctrines of knowledge and value by undertaking a systematic philosophy without foundations. United by a concern for overcoming foundations without overcoming philosophy, the essays in this book discuss a wide range of issues in epistemology and ethics, incorporating analysis of major thinkers of the past and present and drawing critically on Hegel’s argument. The book unveils the dogmatic assumption of the futility of philosophy’s traditional quests for universal truth and ethics and lays out the strategy for achieving autonomy of reason and valid norms of conduct without foundational appeals. After examining how a critique of foundations can be executed without making new foundational claims, Winfield considers how philosophy must operate in order to think truth without given conceptual schemes and to achieve rational autonomy. Finally, the author explores the implications of a reason free of foundations for the history of philosophy and the debates embroiling contemporary thought. The essays outline an independent theory of justice, rethinking morality, and the structures of civil society and democratic government. Overcoming Foundations advances a much ignored philosophical alternative, a systematic contribution to epistemology, ethics, and social and political philosophy.