Quotes About Perspectivism

It will come as no surprise that I would count Nietzsche the perspectivist - he who questioned not only the possibility but the value of Truth - as the enemy. There will be even fewer surprises that I would reject the Dionysian Nietzsche, the celebrant of transgressive desire.

However, the position of my books, and of post-modernism in general, which regards all representations, or maps, or models, as probabilistic and relative to their social context, Gross and Levitt dismissively call "perspectivism" (a good word in my estimation, so I cheerfully accept it). Gross and Levitt see perspectivism as an insidious threat to their One True Faith and a pathway downward to the bottomless abyss of nihilism.

The chief fault of most academic theoreticians of postmodernism, as Gross and Levitt emphasize, lies in never applying perspectivism to themselves — i.e., in holding an oxymoronic position that always implies "everything is relative except my own dogmas." I do not make that error habitually, and I like to think I never make it at all. (I sure hope not, but as a Cosmic Schmuck, I assume I have slipped into it on occasion.*)

The apparent relativism of perspectivism is held in check by Nietzsche's naturalism (which offers the doctrines of becoming and will to power in place of all theological interpretations) and that the apparent dogmatism of these doctrines is mitigated by his perspectivism (which grants that these doctrines are themselves interpretations yet ones that are better by naturalistic standards).