Publication Date
5-1991
Document Type
Article
Abstract
The contemporary intellectual climate bears a striking resemblance to the milieu of epistemological and moral insecurity that characterized the dawn of Modernity. Rene Descartes, the so-called "father of modern philosophy," felt obliged, in the original epistemological gambit of modern philosophy, to subject the then-current orthodoxy to universal methodical doubt. Descartes felt driven to this procedure by the drastic deprecation of traditional beliefs that accompanied the mathematical, scientific, and social revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The demise of the geocentric cosmology, the rise of a mechanistic ontology with its attendant undermining of teleological modes of explanation, and the emergence of primitive forms of bourgeois economic activity and social relations, resulted in a stunning shock to the traditional systems of cosmological, moral, social, and psychological understandings. Descartes' method of doubt was strategically to adopt the stance of the unremitting skeptic with an eye toward allaying epistemological anxiety by wiping the cognitive slate clean and identifying the unshakable foundations upon which a sturdy and reliable edifice of knowledge could be built. The subsequent history of mainstream philosophy has been a variation on this original Cartesian theme. The "problem of knowledge" has remained at the center of mainstream philosophy and bears the fingerprints of its Cartesian heritage: the core agenda is to refute the skeptic. Typical front-line work in this tradition consists in attempts (often exhibiting stunning technical virtuosity) to provide justification for, that is, criteria of, knowledge claims, as if these were under perpetual attack.
Recommended Citation
Nasser, Alan G.
(1991)
"Legal Theory in Late Modernity,"
Mercer Law Review: Vol. 42:
No.
3, Article 1.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.law.mercer.edu/jour_mlr/vol42/iss3/1