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.
From visual perception to philosophical analysis
In our everyday life, a round table does not appear as round but as an oval. A rectangular table also appears to us not as perfect rectangular but a diamond like shape. We seldom see a round table as a perfect round one or a rectangular table as rectangular. Although the appearances of the table are not round or rectangular, we understand the table as round or rectangular. To see the table as round or rectangular, we need to see it from a particular point of view. When we identify the table as round or rectangular regardless of variety of its appearances, we tacitly give particular vantage point to the point of view which round or rectangular shape is presented to. Non-perspectivist philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, Kant, and others presupposed the existence of objective reality (Ideas for Plato; objective world for Descartes; thing-in-itself for Kant) and contrasted it with a variety of appearances we experience. Philosophical quest for the one self-identical, unchanging reality is thus accompanied with that of cognitive powers and conditions of human beings, which allow them to see the reality. Perspectivism rejects these presuppositions those philosophers held. It rejects the idea of existence of unchanging, self-identical objective reality and any privileged cognitive capacity of human beings such as reason.
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.
Perspectivism in perception
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), Maurice Merleau-Ponty gave a phenomenological analysis of perception and elaborated how one constitute one's perceptual experiences, which are essentially perspectival.
The essential partiality of our view of things, he argued, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be co-present 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, 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."
Nietzsche's perspectivism
Perspectivism is primarily ascribed to Friedrich Nietzsche, a nineteenth century German philosopher. Nietzsche viewed interpretation as the essential condition of human life or human existence. Human beings find meaning of their existence through constant acts of interpretation and the interpretation is carried out only from a particular perspective. In the Gay Science section 374, he posed a question if human being can live or exist without interpretation and the meaning of existence:
How far the perspective character of existence extends or indeed whether existence has any other character than this; whether existence without interpretation, without "sense," does not become "nonsense,"; whether, on the other hand, all existence is not essentially actively engaged in interpretation...
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Walter Arnold Kaufmann. The Gay Science; With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. New York: Random House, 1974. Section 374, p. 336.
In the same section, Nietzsche points out that intellectual self-analysis cannot go beyond interpretation since the "human intellect cannot avoid seeing itself in its own perspectives" (Ibid).
Nietzsche rejected the idea of objective reality or true being, superposed by diverse thinkers such as Plato, Descartes, and Kant. While these philosophers were equally convinced of the intellectual or rational capacity of human being as the faculty of mind, that can liberate human beings from misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and prejudices. Furthermore, Nietzsche rejected an idea of neutrality of philosophical concepts such as substance, being, self, subject, and others. His predecessors generally presupposed and used those philosophical concepts as given notions. Although they argued about the contents of these concepts, they did not question about their legitimacy. Nietzsche, however, argued that these philosophical concepts were fabricated and invented as a conceptual fallacy by those philosophers in order to interpret the world from a particular perspective.
In On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche warns readers not to be trapped by philosophical concepts used by philosophical traditions:
For let us guard ourselves better from now on, gentlemen philosophers, against the dangerous old conceptual fabrication that posited a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge"; let us guard ourselves against the tentacles of such contradictory concepts as "pure reason," "absolute spirituality," "knowledge in itself"
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic, trans. Maudemarie Clarke and Alan J. Swenswen, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998
Nietzsche thus reject a vantage point of view which is free from any perspective and secure interpretation-free knowledge:
There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival "knowing"; and the more affects we allow to speak about a matter, the more eyes, different eyes, we know how to bring to bear on one and the same matter, that much more complete will our "concept" of this matter, our "objectivity" be.
Ibid.
Although Nietzsche rejected presuppositions of traditional epistemologies, he did not attempt to establish a new one. He rather shifted the entire questions of knowledge into the questions of values. Interpretation gives a value perspective to the interpreter. Nietzsche evaluate all philosophical apparatus from the criterion that if it serves for the affluence or overflow of the power of life. From his perspective, traditional philosophies and Christianity blocked the affluence or overabundance, which is the essence of life. Only when the world is viewed and interpreted from multiple perspectives, dynamic, creative multiplicity of meanings of the world can be secured.
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. 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.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Walter Arnold Kaufmann, and R.J. Hollingdale. The Will to Power. New York: Vintage Books, 1964. §481, p. 267.
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
- ↑ Burton, H. E. (1945). The optics of Euclid. Journal of the Optical Society of America, 35, 357-372.
See also
- Conceptual framework
- Contextualism
- Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
- Fallibilism
External links
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