An Analytical Study of Foundationalism in Epistemology of BonJour

One of the most important epistemological issues in the contemporary era is theories of justification. Justification briefly means providing the necessary proofs or evidences for the truth of a belief. Various theories have been proposed for justifying knowledge, two most important of which are foundationalism and coherentism. The various currents that have arisen in the contemporary Western period in the field of justification, have been the mainstay of epistemologists' tendency towards coherentism, which ultimately results in submission to epistemological relativism, which denies any definite and objective criterion for measuring knowledge. But foundationalism is the most important, serious, and long-standing approach to this trend. The present study aims to pay attention, strengthen and enrich the foundationalist approach and with a descriptive-analytical method examines the foundationalism in Lawrence BonJour 's thought. The authors conclude that BonJour defends the foundations of empirical knowledge by emphasizing the possibility of a direct confrontation between non-conceptual reality and the concepts describing that reality, but by accepting the role of justification for rational intuitions, he is practically inclined to a certain rationalism, and Finally, since he does not rule out the possibility of error in basic beliefs, he believes in moderate foundationalism.