Revisiting the Debate on Foundationalism/Antifoundationalism: Rortys Intervention.

A prominent question to the anti-foundationalist from the very beginning of the western civilization has been that when there are no universal standards and criteria to judge what is right and what is wrong, how can we live and act ethically? Anti-foundationalist position is that all notions of truth, reality or ethics are historically and culturally contingent. This is what Gorgias and Protagoras said in the beginning of western civilization and this is also what philosophers like Burke, Foucault, and Rorty are saying. The problem posed by the foundationalist philosophers following Platonisitc essentialism is that in a world cut loose of all foundational beliefs and principles, anything and any act is as justifiable and ethical as any other act. They would question, how can we say Nazi holocaust was wrong from antifoundationalist position? Now, Foucault and Rorty are among many other philosophers advocating anti-foundationalist or anti-essentialist world view. Both of them reject traditional notions of truth and morality. This challenge of all foundations of the western civilization leads to a very serious and equally meaningful question: what to do next? Who, between Foucault and Rorty, provides a better alternative to the unfounded beliefs on essential truth and ethics? Who provides a better solution to the possible chaos anti-foundationalist notions may create? My proposition is that though Foucault makes a very powerful case for the study of social institutions and the network of power that builds and supports those institutions, he fails to offer us any alternative way to avoid radical relativism and moral chaos. He claims that social institutions are sites of domination and control and further believes that the bonds of control and domination are becoming stronger and more subtle than in the past. In addition, discourse disciplines individuals in such a way that, to a larger extent, they fail to see the nature of discursive domination and control. Even resistance becomes almost impossible. Even when an individual succeeds in analyzing the mechanisms of discourse, the only option for him is a complete isolation. Foucault does not really see any possibility of a better change. So, his analysis is frustratingly pessimistic. Rorty, on the other hand, not only deconstructs essentialist notions of truth and reality, he also provides us an alternative to act and live ethically in the world devoid of any fixed and final moral standards. Rorty offers us ways to function in an ethical manner in our practical world. So, in my presentation, Ill draw both on classical debate and the modern one and focus more on Rortys pragmatic solution to the problem of antifoundationalism.