Abstract

IF MODERN philosophy began with Cartesian doubt, it threatens to end not with a resolution of skepticism but with its dissipation. The skeptic's demand for total justification has been replaced by a repudiation of foundations. Such repudiation has been formulated in terms of holism, contextualism, pragmatism, and interpretationism. Yet some of these approaches display significant difficulties even if we accept their denial of foundations. The approach I will examine in particular here is Richard Rorty's version of holism. I will criticize it not for its denial of foundations--with which I am in complete agreement--but for its incompleteness. I will argue that if we take Rorty's anti-foundationalism seriously, we must develop his theory in certain directions much further than he takes it himself. The directions to be pursued in such developments will become clearer in the course of the discussion. I am particularly concerned to explore the possibility of a systematic but anti-foundational theory--one similar in certain ways to but fundamentally incompatible with holism. I will argue that a metaphysical theory can be developed which accommodates the force of Rorty's, Heidegger's, and Dewey's contextualism--a theory which might be called a perspectival realism.