ABSTRACT
Any quest to provide an alternative to the conventional conception of ‘Good Governance’ due to having been sourced from different ‘light’ must not only be represented as a process of presenting different pictures, or mechanisms with its own values and norms, but also must be preceded with different ontology and epistemology in formulating them. While in the field of governance, the creation of alternatives implies not only the materialization of new systems, but also a whole new structure of knowledge that reflects how reality is being perceived by different views from the existing paradigm. Hence, the alternatives in such structures represent a whole new branch of knowledge with its own epistemology. However, the quest for epistemology in any branch of knowledge can never be achieved without being preceded by a proper scrutinization of the ontological aspect, the exploration of which provides a bigger picture of the knowledge by representing the notion of the ‘reality’ of the world it represents. The notion of reality in one’s mind is a socially constructed reality through the values of a particular worldview emanating from a particular ontology. This worldview later describes the notion of reality for its subscribers. In articulating the accurate meaning, function and importance of the worldview in a person’s life, an individual without a worldview is like “a man who has an abundance of furniture and is continuously moving it from house to house” that nothing is ever fully unpacked or put in its right place so proper use can be made of it (Shariati, n.d.). In the same meaning, to having a great deal of compartmentalized knowledge without a foundation of a definite worldview is akin to having all the materials needed to build a building but lacking a design as to what should be built. To simplify, worldview represents a paradigm that summarizes the comprehension that a person has about ‘being’ or ‘existing’. It explains the meaning of ‘knowing’ such as the meaning of life, society, ethics, beauty and ugliness, truth and falsity (Palmer, 1996: 114; Cobern, 1991; Vidal, 2008).
