Perspectivism
Perspective in visual experiences
Perspective, in context of vision and visual perception, is the way in which objects appear to the eye based on their spatial attributes, or their dimensions and the position of the eye relative to the objects.
As objects become more distant, they appear smaller, because their angular diameter (visual angle) decreases. The visual angle of an object is the angle subtended at the eye by a triangle with the object at its base. The further the height of this triangle, the distance of the object from the eye, the less the visual angle. This follows simply from Euclidean geometry.[1]
The Sun and the Moon appear to be roughly the same size because the Sun, although much, much larger, is also much farther away. The relationship between distance and apparent height of objects is not a linear pattern. If an object were actually touching the eye, thus being no distance away, it would appear infinitely tall.
Anti-perspectivist philosophy
Plato
Plato distinguished the world into two realms: the world of Ideas and that of sensible, material phenomena. He ascribed reality ("ousia" - "true being") to the former because of its changelessness and permanence. When he made the unchanging Ideas as the true being, he also presupposed that human cognition and understanding were supposed to strive for seeing these permanent Ideas. He tied his ontology of unchangeable Ideas with his epistemological ideal of viewing these Ideas.
Based upon these ideas, Plato criticized artists since they paint and describe changing phenomena in diverse ways from each perspective. For Plato, diverse phenomenal world is already a less valuable, ephemeral existence like a shadow of reality. The reality is, for Plato, objective reality free from any perspective.
Descartes and Kant
While Descartes rejected revelation, he succeeded reason as natural light from Medieval thinkers. He developed a theory of knowledge which relied on the power of reason. His rationalism, however, was tied with his conviction that the reality was objective, free from a variety of perspectives cognitive subjects may hold.
The conviction or belief of the existence of objective reality was still found in Kant. His concept of thing-in-itself indicates the existence of reality which is beyond perspectives of viewers.
Perspectivist
Leibniz
Leibniz, contrary to his predecessors, recognized the perspective character of human perception. Each individual (which he called "monad"), he argued, reflects or perceives or mirrors the world from its own perspective. Since each "monad" (individual) is a center of dynamic activities, the world for Leibniz is a dynamic whole filled with multiple perspectives. Libnizian perspectivism in perception was later developed by a French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
In his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945),
The essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time (v. the Uncertainty Principle of Werner Heisenberg) does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (profiles, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads). Through involvement in the world — being-in-the-world — the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it. Each object is a "mirror of all others." Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception. Rather, it is an ambiguous perception founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. (This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a particular object.) Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world.
Perspectivism is the philosophical view developed by Friedrich Nietzsche that all ideations take place from a particular perspective. This means that there are many possible conceptual schemes, or perspectives which determine any possible judgment of truth or value that we may make; this implies that no way of seeing the world can be taken as definitively "true," but does not necessarily propose that all perspectives are equally valid.
View
Perspectivism rejects objectivism as impossible, and claims that there are no objective evaluations which transcend cultural formations or subjective designations. This means that there are no objective facts, and that there can be no knowledge of a thing in itself. This separates truth from a particular (or single) vantage point, and means that there are no ethical or epistemological absolutes. [2] This leads to constant reassessment of rules (i.e., those of philosophy, the scientific method, etc.) according to the circumstances of individual perspectives.[3]. “Truth” is thus formalized as a whole that is created by integrating different vantage points together.
We always adopt perspectives by default, whether we are aware of it or not, and the individual concepts of existence are defined by the circumstances surrounding that individual. Truth is made by and for individuals and peoples.[4] This view differs from many types of relativism which consider the truth of a particular proposition as something that altogether cannot be evaluated with respect to an "absolute truth," without taking into consideration culture and context.
This view is outlined in an aphorism from Nietzsche's posthumously-assembled collection Will to Power.
In so far as the word “knowledge” has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings.—“Perspectivism.”
It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against.[emphasis added] Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm.
Friedrich Nietzsche; trans. Walter Kaufmann , The Will to Power, §481 (1883-1888)
Interpretation
Richard Schacht, in his interpretation of Nietzsche's thought, argues that this can be expanded into a revised form of “objectivity” in relation to “subjectivity” as an aggregate of singular viewpoints that illuminate, for example, a particular idea in seemingly self-contradictory ways but upon closer inspection would reveal a difference of contextuality and of rule by which such an idea (e.g., that is fundamentally perspectival) can be validated. Therefore, it can be said each perspective is subsumed into and, taking account of its individuated context, adds to the overall objective measure of a proposition under examination. Nevertheless, perspectivism does not implicate any method of inquiry nor a structural theory of knowledge in general.[5]
Developments of this view
José Ortega y Gasset has conceived of a potential sum of all perspectives of all lives which could produce an "absolute truth."
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
See also
- Conceptual framework
- Contextualism
- Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
- Fallibilism
External links
| |||||||||||||
Credits
New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:
The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:
Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.
