ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how postmodern ethics and philosophical ideas have been conceived and expressed in different philosophical traditions. One important source for postmodern ethical discourse has been continental philosophy. In order to understand the philosophical grounds from which postmodern theory opposes reason, we need to go back to a crucial moment in the relatively recent history of continental philosophy: Martin Heidegger's critique of ontology as the study of the nature of being. Though Heidegger may not have been the first philosopher in modern philosophy to critique ontology, he is often credited for clearly articulating several major problems with it. American pragmatism, initially led by thinkers such as Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, became an influential school of philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century. Opposition to foundationalism is not unique to pragmatism. Hence, pragmatists adopt social versions of coherentism often known as constructivism'.
