7 Segmented Foundations and Pluralism
Part Three focused on the issue of conventionalism. In my own usage, conventions
are deeply-held bodies of shared social practices, rules, and norms. Conventionalism,
therefore, entails the very general assertion that bodies of norms, rules, and practices
form the linguistic, social, and practical context for action, thought, and speech.
In this sense, conventions constitute forms of life. This is the manner in which
proponents of conventionalism would like to see themselves.^1 In Chapters Five and
Six, the conventional mediums examined were those of the historical-based state,
the community, political liberalism, the nation, the Aristotelian ethos, and the civic
republic. These were viewed as the rule-governed conventional mediums through
which the gamut of concepts such as rights, state, freedoms, obligations, and the
like were recognized, articulated, and legitimized. All these conventional mediums
embodied forms of both immanent and comprehensive foundationalism, filling the
vacuum left by the loss or decline of thin universal foundations.
Two points need drawing out from the above: first, each conventional form of
life sees itself as the crucial foundational medium through which concepts, speech,
and actions become politically and morally meaningful and legitimate. In other
words, each conventional medium provides an answer to both thin universalist crit-
ics, and more recent postmodern critics of foundationalism. Once, for example,
one knows that one cannot be a disconnected critic or citizen (taking a view from
nowhere), and that all our concepts (and sense of what is valuable) derive from
our nation, community, particular republic, or communal ethos—a somewhere—
then we are no longer morally, politically, or ontologically adrift. We can anchor
ourselves unashamedly, nationally, culturally, ethnically, or communally. We have an
ethos. These conventionalist arguments therefore provide a response both to critics
of foundationalism, as well as an alternative to the thin spectral universalism and
egalitarianism of certain recent neo-Kantian and utilitarian theories. In other words,
these conventionalist arguments ‘shore up’ foundations. However, a second critical,
and more damaging issue, follows from this latter argument. A review of the different
forms of conventionalism should alert us to the point that there are high levels of
internal disagreement both within and between conventionalisms. In other words,
there are serious conflicts over what actually constitutes the deep conventional sub-
strate. In addition, one of the logical entailments ofallconventionalist arguments
(often criticized by thin universalists) is that if conventions are the source of legit-
imacy, meaning, thought and action, it follows, for the majority of conventionalists,
that these concepts will differ or vary according to distinct nations, communities,