William Shakespeare

Coherentism?

To coherentize or not to coherentize, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the realm of philosophical meanderings to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous foundationalism or to take arms against a sea of empirical evidence, and by opposing, end them? To coherent, to justify—no more; and by coherence to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural doubts that flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To coherentize, to justify—perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub. For in that coherence of belief what dreams may come when we have shuffled off the shackles of foundational certainty, must give us pause. There's the respect that makes calamity of so long a life; for who would bear the dogmas and the chains of foundationalism, the oppressor's wrong, the scientific pride, the pangs of discredited proofs, the law's delay, the insolence of dogmatists, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when we ourselves might our coherence make with a bare belief? Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary epistemological burden, but that the dread of something far less coherent than this mortal coil inspires the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of? Thus coherence doth make cowards of us all; and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of doubt, and enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of coherence.