Philosophy as Critical Theory

Philosophy as Critical Theory written by Kai Nielsen

All of these philosophers in their sometimes rather different ways may, of course, be mistaken, and foundationalism could still be alive and well and living in North America. But the list is rather impressive, containing many of the luminaries of contemporary philosophy, and that should give the foundationalist, or the foundationalistically inclined person, pause….. Foundationalism is a philosophical account which seeks to isolate, by some kind of philosophical method, a set of basic beliefs which are foundational to all the rest of the things that we may justifiably claim to know or reasonably believe….. The shock of the matter, for philosophers at least, is that philosophers cannot tell us what makes our ideas really clear, what we really mean or what we are justified in believing.