Tag Archives: Philosophy

Nietzsche’s Perspectivism by Steven D. Hales and Rex Welshon

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Nietzsche is generally credited with (or accused of) inventing or popularizing a philosophical view known as “perspectivism”. Philosophers, of course, disagree about what perspectivism is, but, roughly speaking, perspectivism is the idea that all knowledge and belief involves interpretation and all interpretation is carried out from a particular perspective. The fact that all of our ideas are bound up with some perspective or other is then taken to show that our ideas are somehow limited or unreliable. There is no perspective-free knowledge, science or morality. Another way of putting this claim is that we have no access to a “God’s-eye” view of the world.

Perspectivism seems to be one step away from relativism, which might be characterized as the view that no perspective is better than any other. Nietzsche believed that some perspectives are definitely better than others, which is why he was not a relativist.

Hales and Welshon discuss Nietzsche’s views on several different kinds of perspectivism, including perspectivism about truth, knowledge and morality. They also try to explain Nietzsche’s views about the fundamental nature of reality. Although Nietzsche severely criticized those metaphysicians who tried to characterize the world as it is “in itself”, he apparently believed that the world is composed of “quanta of power” and that every quantum of power is associated with a perspective. Hales and Welshon argue that this does not make Nietzsche a metaphysician. Maybe a better explanation is that these ideas came to Nietzsche late in life and are somewhat peripheral to his philosophy.  (3/11/12)

Relativism by Maria Baghramian

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Relativism is, roughly speaking, the idea that statements can be true or actions can be right for one person and not another, because people have different points of view, possibly because they grew up in different cultures or live in different societies. So you and I might be in similar circumstances, but if you belong to the Mafia, it might be right for you to beat up your competition, although it wouldn’t be right for me to do the same thing. 

There are many kinds of relativism. Professor Baghramian considers relativism about truth, rationality, logic, concepts and morality. She says that “we can admit one of the philosophical intuitions informing relativism: that our encounters with the world, our beliefs and judgments, are always perspectival” (p. 313). But she argues that some perspectives are better than others. The morality of the Red Cross is better than the morality of the Mafia, not just from her point of view or the Red Cross’s point of view, but in some objective, non-relativistic sense. 

Baghramian calls her view “pluralism”. She acknowledges the existence of various points of view, and agrees with the relativist that there is no way to choose between some of them, but believes that our common humanity allows us to see that some points of view are clearly better than others. 

I think that Professor Baghramian would agree that we cannot say that one perspective is better than another one, without speaking from some perspective or other. That’s why I think that “perspectivism” might be preferable to pluralism (and relativism). We each have our own physical perspective, and each of us can employ many different perspectives, that is, consider the world from different points of view.

From my single physical perspective, I can evaluate an idea from the perspective of morality, physics, practicality, simplicity, rationality or personal satisfaction. But any perspective can only be evaluated from some other perspective(s). That doesn’t mean that some perspectives are objectively better than others. But it does mean that we can offer reasons for preferring one to another.  (1/24/12)

Physicalism by Daniel Stoljar

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Professor Stoljar is the author of the article called “Physicalism” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. In that article, he explains that physicalism is the metaphysical view that everything in the universe is physical or material, i.e. that there is nothing in the world except stuff like matter and energy and arrangements of such stuff. This is opposed to other views, like the ancient claim by Thales that everything is made of water, or the more modern theory of Bishop Berkeley, who said that all of reality is mental. A physicalist, in particular, will deny that there are minds or souls that exist somehow independently of people’s living bodies. 

In his book called Physicalism, however, Stoljar argues that there is no way to state the doctrine of physicalism that will result in a view that is both physicalistic (“physicalism that deserves the name”) and true. Either we have to broaden our definition of “physicalism”, in which case it’s not really physicalism anymore, or we have to restrict our definition, in which case the world isn’t completely physicalistic. 

Stoljar presents lots of arguments for and against his position in great detail (too much detail for me anyway). The conclusion I reached, however, is that although it is difficult to offer a precise definition of physicalism that can deal with every imaginable counter-example (e.g. physics in an alternate universe), it is sufficiently clear what the physicalist position is. Scientists have been investigating the nature of reality at low levels (the subatomic) and high levels (the intergalactic) and cataloging what they’ve found. So far it seems that everything is made up of certain kinds of stuff (photons, quarks, dark energy, strings, whatever).

The physicalist view is that there’s nothing else floating around, in particular, no mental substances, souls, angels or unattached ideas. Stoljar says we can’t sensibly explain physicalism in terms of what there isn’t (he calls this the via negativa), but it seems to me that we can. The list of non-physicalistic things that we need to mention (e.g. souls and mental substances) is not as long as Stoljar suggests.  (1/2/12)

Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction: Reason in History by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, translated by H. B. Nisbet

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According to Hegel, history is the process by which Spirit, or the Absolute, or God, or the Idea, or something like that, becomes conscious of itself, understands itself, and thereby becomes more free or generates more freedom in the world, or something to that effect. World-historical figures like Napoleon and Goethe play a crucial role in this process of increasing freedom and self-knowledge, as do certain world-historical nations (e.g. Greece, Rome, Prussia). The state is the principal mechanism by which history progresses, and such progress occurs in a dialectical manner (although Hegel didn’t use the “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” terminology; those were Fichte’s words).

This is an interesting theory, even if it’s simultaneously obscure and implausible. Although this relatively short book is supposed to be the best introduction that Hegel wrote to his own philosophy, that isn’t saying much. It is filled with statements like “the spirit is essentially the product of its own activity, and its activity consists in transcending and negating its immediacy and turning in upon itself”, and “world history is the expression of the divine and absolute process of the spirit in its highest forms, of the progression whereby it discovers its true nature and becomes conscious of itself”. Repeating such statements does little to clarify their meaning.

Hegel was able to express himself clearly in some cases, however. For example: “A mighty figure” — someone like Napoleon, for example — “must trample many an innocent flower underfoot, and destroy much that lies in its path”. And “duty requires that men should defend not whatever country they choose but their own particular fatherland”, for “the worth of individuals is measured by the extent to which they reflect and represent the national spirit”, not by their pursuit of goodness for its own sake, since that is an “empty notion”.

Hegel’s obscurity has helped make his writings a popular object of scholarly interpretation. He might have been referring to himself in this passage: “The intellectual attitude which adopts such formal points of view certainly affords unlimited scope for ingenious questions, scholarly opinions, striking comparisons, and seemingly profound reflections and declamations; their brilliance may in fact seem to increase in proportion to their capacity for indefiniteness”.  (12/4/11)

Hegel in 90 Minutes by Paul Strathern

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I’m struggling through Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of World History and thought this little book might help me understand what Hegel is getting at. It didn’t help at all. The author concentrates on Hegel’s life while disparaging his terrible writing style and overblown, incomprehensible, inconsistent and inaccurate ideas. The book is funny at times, however, and easy to read. It’s a book that someone might look at in order to get an idea who Hegel was and how he expressed himself.  

One of the best parts of Hegel in 90 Minutes is this quotation from Schopenhauer: “The height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously only been known in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most barefaced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result that will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument to German stupidity”.  (11/25/11)