Anti-foundationalism

Anti-foundationalists use logical or historical or genealogical attacks on foundational concepts (see especially Nietzsche and Foucault), often coupled with alternative methods for justifying and forwarding intellectual inquiry, such as the pragmatic subordination of knowledge to practical action.

[2] Foucault dismissed the search for a return to origins as Platonic essentialism, preferring to stress the contingent nature of human practices.

[5] Anti-foundationalists oppose totalising visions of social, scientific or historical reality, considering them to lack legitimation,[6] and preferring local narratives instead.

[10] Fear of the corrosive effects of antifoundationalism was widespread in the late twentieth century, anticipating such things as a cultural meltdown and moral anarchy,[11] or (at the least) a loss of the necessary critical distance to allow for leverage against the status quo.

[14] Fish has also noted how, in contradistinction to hopes of an emancipatory outcome from antifoundationalism, anti-essentialist theories arguing for the absence of a transcontextual point of reference have been put to conservative and neo-conservative, as well as progressive, ends.