INTRODUCING THE PHILOSOPHERS Nietzsche's Perspectivism
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Stand under your tree which now is full of ripe plums. You pick them. You move a little to your left or right and you see plums ready to be picked that were right in front of you where you stood before but which you couldn't see.
Along with Nietzsche's concept of Perspectivism we will be examining more familiar concepts, such as truth, knowledge and facts, and the importance of interpretation.
The excerpts below are from the link Horizons of Seeing: Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Perspectivism” as Radical Epistemology, and are followed by my questions and comments.
- As he wrote in a fragment from 1886-1887: “Against the positivism which halts at phenomena—’there are only facts’—I would say: no, facts precisely do not exist, only interpretations… It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their for and against. Every drive is a kind of lust for dominion, each has its perspective, which it would like to impose as a norm on all other drives”
Look up positivism if you are not familiar with the term.
The above is a kind of introduction to what we will be examining.
2. What do you understand by 'excesses of history'? And how can these be 'at the expense of being and living'?
Consider this too
“life itself is conditioned by the perspectival and its injustice”.
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“A conversation that in reality delights, when transformed into writing and read, is a painting with nothing but false perspectives: everything is too long or too short*
In what sense would it be too long or too short? -
what we consider most important is determined by our position and proximity.
Can then our perspective change depending on our 'proximity'? -
Nietzsche celebrates the multiplicity of perspectives as constitutive of human freedom:
How do you understand the relationship between perspectivism and freedom?
6. "perspective is directly tied to valuation itself—suggesting there can be no values without perspectives from which to value.
Are, then, values based on facts or perspectives?
7. I decided not to include here section IV: Polytheism and Perspectivism as I felt it is fairly self-explanatory. However, people can comment briefly on it, if they want.
- ....... genuine knowledge requires distance and even opposition
How do distance and even opposition lead to genuine knowledge? Or do they?
9. Do you agree that the more perspectives we have on a matter the more objective we finally are?
10. "he emphasizes how “something must be viewed under many perspectives” and how different values would have different meanings depending on whether they served “the greatest durability of a race” or “the development of a stronger type”
There is a lot to unpack in this quote. Let's try to make sense of it.
- In another note, he states: “Perspectivism is only a complex form of specificity”. This cryptic formulation connects perspectivism to his understanding of the will to power, suggesting that the specific nature of every entity manifests as its unique perspective on everything else.
Again, let's unpack.
I2. in this crucial passage, Nietzsche connects perspectivism to consciousness itself, suggesting that consciousness inevitably translates our unique individual experiences into “herd perspectives.” Far from celebrating this as liberation, Nietzsche sees it as a “corruption” of our singular experiences: “Our actions are at bottom altogether incomparably personal, unique, and infinitely individual… but as soon as we translate them into consciousness they no longer seem to be… This is the proper phenomenalism and perspectivism as I understand it: the nature of animal consciousness makes the world of which we can become conscious only a surface- and sign-world, a world turned into generalities and thereby debased to its lowest common denominator.”
What do you understand by 'we translate them (our actions) into consciousness'?
13.Having read Chapter VIII. Philosophical Implications: Beyond Relativism and Objectivism do you think Nietzsche denies the possibility of truth?
14. I leave Chapter IX for now.
15. For a final word on Perspectivism, read the last paragraph in the link (Chapter X) and say what you think.
INTRODUCING THE PHILOSOPHERS Nietzsche's Perspectivism