ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents the basic argument for the normativity of autonomy in theory and practice by first delineating the dilemmas plaguing the fundamental forms of foundationalism and then sketching how their problems are overcome when thought and action become self-determined. It explores how foundational problems continue to undermine the most prominent schools of contemporary Analytic and Continental epistemology and how Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Science of Logic pioneer a feasible alternative strategy for developing philosophy without foundations. The book investigates how the autonomy and individuality of conceptual determination enable reason to conceive truth without falling prey to the traditional problems that would relegate philosophy to a mortuary of empty universals. It examines how the relation of property right to other more complex forms of freedom allows the common law to retain its unity.
