LET THE REAL FEYERABEND PLEASE STAND : INTERROGATING THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS FOR A POST-MODERNIST EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE HUMAN PERSON

I consider it necessary to begin this interrogation of the ontological basis for a post-modernist epistemology of a human person with the assumption that there is a necessary relationship between metaphysics and epistemology. It is difficult to think of an epistemological stance without a corresponding metaphysics. By extension, it would be difficult to think of an epistemology of the human person without a given ontological stance. Ontology is the science of ‘being’ in general, covering such issues as the nature of existence and categorial structure of reality. As a term, ‘ontology’ has some additional special uses in philosophy. It is used to refer to the set of things whose existence is acknowledged by a particular theory or system of thought: it is in this sense that one speaks of ‘the ontology of a theory’. 1 To this extent, the post-modernist epistemology of the human person must rests on a given ontological scheme, and interrogating this ontological scheme is the point of focus for this essay. The work, therefore, considers the metaphysical ground or justification of a post-modernist theory of cognition concerning the human person. In other words, the work raises the question, how does the postmodern condition influence our cognitive process concerning the nature of the human person?

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