Il pragmatismo di Nietzsche. Saggi sul pensiero prospettivistico

Abstract

Pietro Gori's book is an admirable and successful attempt to define and critically discuss one of the most controversial aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy—that is, the meaning of his perspectivism. Overinterpreted by postmodernist and poststructuralist philosophers and assaulted by the supporters of “new realism,” Nietzsche's perspectivism remains an interpretative black hole for academic and nonacademic readers alike. Gori's book sheds light on this obscure topic. If at least one residual dark point remains, the fault is not Gori's, but reflects the inner complexity of Nietzsche's position. Or so I will argue in the following.Gori's book is composed of five independent, but interconnected, chapters. His aim is both to treat the concept of perspectivism by focusing on Nietzsche's published and unpublished writings and to consider their context, or what Mazzino Montinari called “the extra-text” of Nietzsche's reflections—that is, the cultural debates that influenced Nietzsche. Thus, Gori compares Nietzsche's position with those of authors and thinkers like Ernst Mach, Hans Vaihinger, Gustav Teichmüller, Herbert Spencer, Afrikan Spir, Hans Kleinpeter, and Henri Poincaré, and later figures like Donald Campbell, Karl Popper, and the American pragmatist William James. Importantly, in discussing James, Gori emphasizes that in defining Nietzsche as a “pragmatist,” he does not mean to reduce Nietzsche's late philosophy to this position. Rather, his intention is simply to “shed light on the ‘pragmatist feature’ of Nietzsche's thought,” and to show that it is “deeper and more significant than one commonly thinks” (16, my translations throughout).The first chapter of the book works as a sort of general introduction to Nietzsche's perspectivism, despite the specificity of its two framing questions. The first of these questions is, did Nietzsche defend an “evolutionary epistemology,” the research program defined in the twentieth century by Donald T. Campbell, and by Karl Popper before him? The second, and more general question is, what is Nietzsche's point of view on both knowledge and truth?Gori's answer to the first question is negative. He stresses that, even though they start from similar epistemological premises—including the rejection of the correspondence theory of truth, an evolutionary conception of knowledge, and the idea that the categories of thought are “a priori for the individual but a posteriori for the species” (20, 50)—Nietzsche and Campbell arrive at substantially different conclusions. In particular, they diverge on one essential point, namely, how to deal with the unavoidable threat of epistemological relativism. Campbell thinks that our intellect is shaped by adaptation to an external world whose actual existence it is possible to state hypothetically, and, moreover, that from the features of our organs and categories of reason it is possible to infer some “real” attributes of reality. Campbell's “hypothetical realism” (as Michael Bradie calls it [29]) thus constitutes an objective point of reference for human knowledge, which wards off ontological relativism. In contrast, Nietzsche rejects any form of realism, and stresses the falsifying character of human knowledge.It is at this point that Gori broaches the analysis of Nietzsche's new conception of truth. The second chapter is a detailed and convincing contextualization of Nietzsche's famous (and infamously abused) dichotomy between “facts” and “interpretations” (KSA 12:7[60]). What is impressive in Gori's approach is the meticulousness of his methodology, which puts “the historico-philological analysis at the service of the philosophical interpretation.” In Gori's view, only in this way is it possible to avoid “the superficiality of many bad interpretations of Nietzsche's thought, which tend to isolate some sentences from their context and use them in support of an ill-founded and often arbitrary reading” (60). Putting Nietzsche's notebook remark in its original anti-positivist context, Gori manages to show that Nietzsche's perspectivism, (1) far from being an anti-scientific position, is more precisely the expression of a “post-positivist” attitude towards scientific (and, more generally, human) knowledge (93); (2) does not support a “bad” relativism—that is, a relativism leading to nihilistic or pessimistic outcomes—but rather is the ground of a positive attitude towards life (63); and (3) goes beyond the merely theoretical field, having implications also in moral and existential domains (99). As Gori shows throughout this chapter, all the elements that Nietzsche refers to in the notebook remark about “facts” and “interpretations” can be traced back to the phenomenalist epistemology debated during the second half of the nineteenth century. That epistemology is basically a development of Comtian positivism on a neo-Kantian basis, and deals with the question of human knowledge in an agnostic and pragmatic way. That is, it denies the possibility of pursuing a meaningful discourse about the “thing in itself,” and it supports a relativization of “truth” that does not imply a rejection of it on purely utilitarian grounds. According to Gori (97), this phenomenalist epistemology is the fundamental premise of Nietzschean perspectivism, which can therefore be understood only in relation to the post-positivistic strategy developed for dealing with the epistemological relativism implied by the outcomes of modern science.For Gori, what constitutes Nietzsche's original and properly philosophical contribution to this position is the application of perspectivism to morality. This he deals with in the third chapter. He begins by posing a fundamental question, which according to him “always represented an unclear point in Nietzsche's reflection on perspectivism”—namely, “what is the subject of a perspective, according to Nietzsche?” (101). Gori explores four possible subjects that appear in Nietzsche's published and unpublished writings: the species (GS 110; KSA 10:4[192]), human society (GS 354; KSA 12:2[206]), the individual human being, and “each centre of force,” the fundamental elements of natural dynamics in Nietzsche's view (KSA 13:14[184]). Gori deals particularly with the third option, for it is at once the most plausible and the most problematic. It has been argued that the human being is the subject that actually interests Nietzsche (e.g., Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], 128; Brian Leiter, “Perspectivism in Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals,” in Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, ed. R. Schacht [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994], 334–52; and Volker Gerhard, “Die Perspektive des Perspektivismus,” Nietzsche-Studien 18.1 [1989]: 260–81). But Nietzsche himself strongly criticized the possibility of considering a human subject as a causal agent (104–5; see also Christoph Cox, “The ‘Subject’ of Nietzsche's Perspectivism,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 35.2 [1997]: 269–91, 276). Moreover, on Nietzsche's account, this subject is as much a collective entity as the first two options are. Therefore, to consider the (supposed) individual subject to be the subject of perspectives implies the same problems as the species and society options. Gori concludes that it is not possible to “individuate a privileged point of view which would constitute for Nietzsche the angle of observation ‘par excellence’ from which to watch the world” (109). However, the fact that Nietzsche referred to different subjects is not contradictory. On the contrary, it suggests that it is possible to “apply the perspectival model in different situations, to wider or narrower subjects, according to the specific situation under consideration” (101). Indeed, according to Gori, perspectivism reflects the relational dynamics that pertain to all of the mentioned kinds of subject, all of which are individual only in a fictitious and practical sense (109).Inspired by the idea that the relevance of Nietzsche's subjects of perspectivism must be judged by their practical value, Gori concludes the third chapter by focusing on what Nietzsche claims about human society in GS 354. There Nietzsche argues that consciousness emerged under the pressure of a communicative need—that is, the human being's need to be understood by others when in danger, and to use a language that reflects a shared, collective set of emotions and inner experiences. Nietzsche's famous conclusion is that although consciousness is supposed to have truthful access to the world, in fact “all becoming conscious involves a vast and through corruption, falsification and generalization” (GS 354). Moreover, the result of the activity of consciousness is a “surface- and sign-world” that Nietzsche conceives as an expression of the “herd instinct.” It is on this point that his epistemological reflections and his moral philosophy merge, and the concept of perspectivism represents their intersection. For, as Gori argues, in GS 354 Nietzsche connects his view of consciousness to what he calls “the true phenomenalism and perspectivism,” and his (critical) theoretical remarks on the very possibility of “knowing” to the moral topic that most interests him, namely, European culture and morality, or the herd perspective (127).In the fourth chapter, Gori aims to show how and why Nietzsche's philosophy can be considered a kind of pragmatism. First, Gori provides a broad definition of “pragmatism,” which according to him is a view that fills the void left by modern epistemology and shows that the value of ideas may be determined by their positive practical implications (131). Then, a thorough study of Kleinpeter's and Vaihinger's interpretations of Mach's and Nietzsche's phenomenalism and of Henry Berthelot's and John Dewey's early interpretations of Jamesian pragmatism allows Gori to show why Nietzsche can reasonably be included in the broad family of pragmatist philosophers.In arguing for this reading in the fifth and final chapter (which is based on his article “Nietzsche on Truth: A Pragmatic View?,” Nietzscheforschung 20 [2013]: 71–90) Gori compares Nietzsche's and William James's views on truth, and refers to Ernst Mach's phenomenalist epistemology in order to shed light on their views. As Gori argues, both Nietzsche and James reject a correspondence theory of truth (165, 177); defend a conception of truth as an “event” or process, as something to be made, rather than something that exists in itself and “outside” man (178); affirm the “neutrality” of sensations, that is, their being neither true nor false independently of our knowledge of them (the only thing that can be true or false is the result of our judgement and classification) (179); and claim the necessity of judging the truth-value of an idea—which can only be relative—on the basis of its actual outcomes in practical or existential terms (188).This last point is probably the most problematic of the book—the “residual dark point” I mentioned at the beginning of the review. For, if the validity of every pragmatic view (including Nietzsche's) is itself only pragmatic (and not theoretical), how can we distinguish which philosophical proposal is the best, or at least preferable to others? In other words, if the only way to judge a philosophical conception of life is to judge its practical implications for life, how could one judgment be privileged among others? Aren't we in the same situation as that identified by Nietzsche when he denies that an intellect can recognize its own perspectival knowing as perspectival (KSA 12:6[23]; see Gori, 87)? That Gori himself is aware of this interpretive knot is suggested by his response to the question of a “privilege reading” that Brian Leiter, among others, poses (“Nietzsche's Metaethics: Against the Privilege Reading,” European Journal of Philosophy 8.3 [2000]: 277–97; see Gori, 188–90). In the dense footnotes 50 and 53, Gori discusses the importance of Nietzsche's pragmatic approach as a sort of “defense” of his perspectival view of human knowledge. While agreeing with Leiter that Nietzsche “never pretended that his evaluation enjoyed a metaphysical or epistemological privilege” (189), Gori claims that another kind of privilege can be affirmed, namely, a pragmatic privilege based on the effects that assuming the perspectival approach will produce on the human being. Indeed, Gori argues, as a critic of the lower human type generated by Christian morality, Nietzsche might have conceived perspectivism as an opposed worldview, out of which a “higher” type of man could arise (190). According to this view, Nietzsche's perspectivism is merely an attempt to outline an alternative to Christianity, an “experimental philosophy” (as Friedrich Kaulbach famously defined it) that Nietzsche does not pretend to be the best in absolute terms.This is an ingenious response, but the question that echoes behind it is still, for whom—or, for which perspective—is Nietzsche's anthropological model better? As Gori himself points out, Nietzsche's perspectivism can be preferable “only to those who agree with both the diagnosis and the prognosis” of European culture that he offers (190 n. 53). On this point, Gori touches a raw nerve of Nietzsche's late philosophy, which is probably destined to remain sensitive.That said, Gori's book can nonetheless be considered one of the most important contributions to the scholarship on perspectivism. Gori demonstrates a remarkable knowledge of Nietzsche's published and unpublished works, as well as an admirable command of the secondary literature on the subject—his claims are always presented with reference to the contemporary debates, as represented by English-language commentators like John Richardson, Maudemarie Clark, and Brian Leiter and by important German-language commentators, such as Günter Abel, Friedrich Kaulbach, and Volker Gerhard. The way in which he manages to demonstrate how close Nietzsche's philosophy is to both the pragmatism of William James and the phenomenalism of Ernst Mach is convincing, and this is due particularly to the methodology adopted, which combines a historical approach with rigorous philosophical analysis.