ABSTRACT
Antifoundationalism refers to a movement tied to a collection of social theorists who are unified less by a common project than by a common critique. This critique concerns how-beginning with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment-Western civilization has been obsessed with (1) the search for foundational knowledge and (2) the role of reason as the source of knowledge and truth. Foundational knowledge implies a set of universal premises that provide a demonstrable basis for certainty and truth. Before the Enlightenment, foundational knowledge was based on church doctrine. In the post-Enlightenment period, foundational knowledge is attributed to reason. To unravel the consequences of this, it is helpful to first consider the general critique offered by antifoundationalism that serves as a response to post-Enlightenment thought.
