Abstract

In this dissertation I examine whether the natural law tradition of moral foundations is compatible with a postmodern contingent theory of knowledge. My thesis is that it is not. Traditional natural law relies on the assumption of epistemological realism which cannot be upheld from the perspective of postmodernism. This result is not to be bemoaned. Traditional natural law is not desirable whereas the social and political consequences of postmodernism are. ;I provide a brief history of natural law before examining recent and contemporary attempts to provide an adequate foundation for morality in natural law. The arguments of John Wild for deductive realism, Erazim Kohak for nature mysticism, Peter Kropotkin for scientific naturalism, Anthony Battaglia and John Finnis for Neo-Thomism, and Ernst Bloch and Roberto Mangabeira Unger for regulative idealism are discussed. I then develop the argument that apart from the regulative idealists, all positions share the assumption of epistemological realism. ;After inspecting the historical roots of contingent theories of knowledge in sociology and anthropology, I turn to its progressively more radical developments in contemporary philosophy. Kuhn's sociologizing of science, Rorty's anti-foundational pragmatism and Feyerabend's anti-ratiofascism are presented as philosophical culminations of a contingent theory of knowledge. I then claim unity for these viewpoints in the rejection of any realistic epistemological criteria for knowledge. ;The moral and philosophical consequences of postmodernism then come under scrutiny. I maintain that contrary to the foundational viewpoint, the consequences of a postmodern theory of knowledge are morally acceptable and philosophically sound. On the other hand, attempts to find an independent source of moral criteria in traditional natural law fail. ;I conclude that postmodernism can be united under the moral banner of Freedom, Non-domination, Tolerance and Relativism. Such a banner creates an unnatural law of postmodernism which serves as a focus for the values and ideals of a contingent theory of knowledge