File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1998/nietzsche.9801, message 1


Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1998 20:39:19 -0800 (PST)
From: callihan-AT-callihan.seanet.com (Steven E. Callihan)
Subject: Re: Perspectivism


>>Steve:
>>Nietzsche would seem to be saying that the self-critique of the will to
>>truth (or science) must ground itself out, if you will, in its own
>>understanding of itself as forming a "concealed will to death." The stages
>>are the uncovering of will to truth as: 1) a moral faith, 2) a will to
>>death, 3) as will to power/will of life.
>
>Henry:
>we seem to be somewhere between the 'truth' of #2
>and the nietzschean expectation of #3---
>which is interesting  to me.

Alternatively, he might be interpreted as opposing them. That is, the will
to truth _might_ be a concealed will to death, but need not necessarily be
so. The will to truth might just as easily be associated with the will to
life, I suppose. The question would be whether it was expressive of
descending or ascending life, etc. Activity vs. reactivity. Still, I think
that dialectics are necessarily negational, is a subtraction from, rather
than an adding up of a whole. Action is active, in other words. Thought is
always reactive.

>>The key here, I think, is the notion that there can be no self-standing
>>perspective (no perspective in itself), but rather that anything that may be
>>termed a perspective (or vantage point) can only do so on the basis of its
>>relation to other, presupposed perspectives.
>
>it appears to me that 'perspectives' are not just one dimensionally
>related to other perspectives; but, to be actually comprehensible,
>all perspectives must have a shared lucidity, a practical holistic
>multi-dimensionality (not a strict, correct, truthfulness)
>which, from heidegger we call the "background."
>also, the "Enframing" of technology is the name for the
>current one that heid. depicts and correlates with
>nietzsche's "metaphysics."
>
>>Steve:
>>There is no perspective that
>>does not presuppose other perspectives. If we take this thought seriously,
>>we have to come to the notion that perspectivity, if you will, forms a
>>holism that conjoins one perspective to another, but which itself cannot be
>>asserted as a perspective. Interestingly, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Peirce,
>>three very different thinkers, would seem to all concur here. Thus, one is
>>perfectly free to assert this or that perspective, but only on the basis of
>>presupposing all other possible perspectives as a kind of "background," if
>>you will (now I'm definitely reifying you).
>
>now you're saying what i been saying for years.  what is curcial
>is that it is a practical holism and not a formal one.

As long as we do not mistake this holism for something that is separate from
the perspectives themselves. It is other perspectives which are presupposed,
not something that is not, itself, a perspective. This is where Peirce jumps
into the picture, with his notion of synechism.

Another problem is that both suppositions (perspectives) and presuppostions
(also perspectives) are essentially logical in character, or at least the
relation between them, by means of which they may be said to gain any degree
of uniqueness or definition, are. The assertion of anything resembling a
perspective is dependent upon logical grounds. Perspectivism is grounded, in
other words, in a prior reduction, in the equating of the inequatable. On
the assertion of identical cases. Prior to such a movement, no such thing as
a perspective is possible.

>>But the world in which we live (of which we are a
>>part) is an essential ambiguity. Nietzsche, for instance, asserts that all
>>our values cohere to qualities, not quantities, except in the sense that
>>quantity, itself, might be said to be a quality. Qualities, however, are
>>essentially incalculable. The background disappears into the incommensurate,
>>in other words.
>>
>henry:
>i'm not sure that the background disappears into the
>incommensurate or into what heid calls Being.  but either
>way we're talking about the same thing, whether we
>describe it as undescribable or as Big B, which is
>"the disclosed undisclosing" and so on.  and the suggestions
>about qualities, quantities and values mystifies me as to
>its meaning within the groundlessness of nietzsche's
>"background."

Except, once again, the "background" cannot be conceived as existing apart
from the foreground. In terms of a multiplicity of perspectives, one
perspective's foreground would be another's background, etc.
Contextualization here is simply the relation of a perspective to other
perspectives, and not to something that is, itself, not a perspective.
Context, however, is ambiguous specifically because it cannot be said to
comprise every perspective, but only those perspectives which are necessary
to (presupposed by) the foreground perspective, so to speak, which would be
different for every perspective, I can only assume.

>Steve:
>>And one should have qualms. That is the will to truth, or skepticism, at
>>work. But to extend our skepticism to the very grounds for that skepticism,
>>that would also be skepticism at work. The circular question here, it seems
>>to me, must come back to the question of morality. As Nietzsche puts it in
>>GS 344, "Thus the question "Why science?" leads back to the moral problem:
>>_Why have morality at all when life, nature, and history are 'not moral'?"
>>Nihilism is the collapse of moral authority, in other words. How might
>>morality, itself, be revalued, regrounded, in other words?
>>
>
>as you know, this is beyond scepticism, this
>is the circularity and perspectival essence of
>the horizons of human understanding.
>
>i am not sure about "morality"
>but my first reaction is, whoa...

Nietzsche posits "morality" as the _sumum bonum_ of a particular group,
society, people, etc. If morality is to be revalued, in the wake of the
collapse of any kind of absolute authority for morality, it can only be on
the basis of something along the lines of the "enhancement of the human
type," for instance. But no moral code could be said to apply universally to
all types--each type would have its own morality, in other words. On the
higher levels, it seems to me, morality would simply be dissolved into
ethics, while on the lower...

Best,

Steve

----------------------------------------------------------------------
=A6 Steven E. Callihan            =A6        "The more mistrust,         =A6
=A6                               =A6        the more philosophy."       =A6
=A6 URL: http://www.callihan.com/ =A6                                    =A6
=A6 E-Mail: callihan-AT-callihan.com =A6-F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 346.=A6
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