ETHICS AND ONTOLOGICAL GROUNDING IN MODERN AND POSTMODERN PHILOSOPHY: A Critical Survey of Foundational Authorities

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines how modern and postmodern philosophical traditions treat the relationship between ethics and ontological grounding. Modern philosophy, from Kant through natural law theory, generally assumed that moral claims require metaphysical foundations, whether in rational agency, historical spirit, human nature, or the primordial encounter with the Other. Postmodern philosophy, by contrast, interrogated and frequently rejected such foundations, treating them as covert exercises of power, logocentrism, or totalising metaphysics. Through close engagement with Kant, Hegel, Finnis, Levinas, Nietzsche, Derrida, Foucault, Rorty, Badiou, and Putnam, this paper maps the trajectory from ontologically grounded ethics to anti-foundationalist and post-foundationalist alternatives. The analysis reveals that the boundary between modern and postmodern positions is more porous than standard accounts suggest: transitional figures such as Levinas and counter-currents such as Badiou and Putnam complicate any neat division, and the question of whether ethics can survive without ontology remains among the most generative in contemporary philosophy.