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Concept

Perspectivism

Perspectivism
The original uploader was Magnus Manske at English Wikipedia. Later versions were uploaded by Optimager at en.wikipedia. · Public domain · source

Overview

Perspectivism (also called perspectivalism) is the epistemological principle that perception of and knowledge of something are always bound to the interpretive perspectives of those observing it. While perspectivism does not regard all perspectives and interpretations as being of equal truth or value, it holds that no one has access to an absolute view of the world cut off from perspective. Instead, all such viewing occurs from some point of view which in turn affects how things are perceived. Rather than attempt to determine truth by correspondence to things outside any perspective, perspectivism thus generally seeks to determine truth by comparing and evaluating perspectives among themselves. Perspectivism may be regarded as an early form of epistemological pluralism, though in some accounts includes treatment of value theory, moral psychology, and realist metaphysics.

Early forms of perspectivism have been identified in the philosophies of Protagoras, Michel de Montaigne, and Gottfried Leibniz. However, its first major statement is considered to be Friedrich Nietzsche's development of the concept in the 19th century, influenced by Gustav Teichmüller's use of the term some years prior. For Nietzsche, perspectivism takes the form of a realist antimetaphysics while rejecting both the correspondence theory of truth and the notion that the truth-value of a belief always constitutes its ultimate worth-value. The perspectival conception of objectivity used by Nietzsche sees the deficiencies of each perspective as remediable by an asymptotic study of the differences between them. This stands in contrast to Platonic notions in which objective truth is seen to reside in a wholly non-perspectival domain.

According to Alexander Nehamas, perspectivism is often misinterpreted as a form of relativism, whereby we acknowledge the true virtue of fully rejecting the 'Law of excluded middle' regarding a particular proposition. Lacewing Michael adds that although perspectivism doesn't accede to an objective view of the world that is detached from our subjectivity, our assessment of reality can still approach "objectivity" subjectively and asymptotically. Nehamas also describes how perspectivism does not prohibit someone from holding some interpretations to be definitively true. It only alerts us that we cannot objectively determine the truth from outside our perspective. The idea that perspectivism is an absolutely true thesis, is called weak perspectivism by Brian Lightbody.

The basic principle that things are perceived differently from different perspectives (or that perspective determines one's limited and unprivileged access to knowledge) has sometimes been accounted as a rudimentary, uncontentious form of perspectivism. The basic practice of comparing contradictory perspectives to one another may also be considered one such form of perspectivism (See also: Intersubjectivity), as may the entire philosophical problem of how true knowledge is to penetrate one's perspectival limitations.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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  1. But all philosophy is either cognition on the basis of pure reason, or the cognition of reason on the basis of empirical principles. The former is termed pure, the latter empirical philosophy. The philosophy of pure reason is either propædeutic, that is, an inquiry into the powers of reason in regard to pure à priori cognition, and is termed critical philosophy; or it is, secondly, the system of pure reason—a…

    Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason

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  2. Finally, the growing consciousness is a danger, and whoever lives among the most conscious Europeans knows even that it is a disease. As may be conjectured, it is not the antithesis of subject and object with which I am here concerned: I leave that distinction to the epistemologists who have remained entangled in the toils of grammar (popular metaphysics). It is still less the antithesis of "thing in itself" and…

    Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom

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  3. The question of the relationship of thinking and being has another side; in what relation do our thoughts with regard to the world surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thought in a position to recognize the real world? Can we, in our ideas and notion of the real world, produce a correct reflection of the reality? This question is called in philosophical language the question of the identity of thinking…

    Friedrich Engels, Feuerbach

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Philosophers who discussed Perspectivism

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Ancient Greek philosophy.

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