The Paradox of Perspectivism

Abstract

The last twenty years of English-speaking Nietzsche scholarship have been dominated by the paradox of perspectivism. Perspectivism is the view that any claim to knowledge is bound to the perspective formed by the contingent of the knower. Nearly all existing interpretations fall within one of two categories. On the one hand, this relativity to perspective is thought to underwrite a generalized skepticism: we are irretrievably locked up in a perspective which may distort our apprehension of reality. On the other hand, perspectivism is interpreted as anti-essentialism: there is no independent reality the apprehension of which our perspective might distort; accordingly, our judgments are less a matter of correspondence to objective reality than expression of subjective attitudes. Unsurprisingly, this anti-essentialism is often associated with relativism. On both kinds of interpretation, perspectivism is thought to generate a self-referential paradox: if every view is irretrievably bound to a perspective, how could Nietzsche advocate views in ethics and metaphysics, and indeed how could he consistently advocate perspectivism itself? The paradox is inevitable, it is assumed, because to advocate a view is necessarily to present it as true, that is to say, as making a claim on everyone regardless of their particular perspective. Beyond this, perspectivism itself in Nietzsche seems to depend on the very claims to knowledge it repudiates (e.g., that there are interests constituting the various perspectives). There have seemed to be two basic ways of resolving this paradox. According to the first, which may be called the two-level solution, Nietzsche advocates views in ethics, metaphysics and epistemology, and perspectivism is simply one of these (purportedly true) views; there is no paradox because the sort of limitations on knowledge claims this perspectivism implies somehow do not apply to his central views in ethics, metaphysics and epistemology. However, this two-level solution seems suspiciously ad hoc. It must show why perspectivism, together with its metaphysical underpinnings, does not apply to itself or does not, if it does so apply, generate the worrisome self-referential paradox.