Encounters with Nietzsche: Collective Self-overcoming
Exploring Nietzsche’s Concept of Perspectivism
Beyond the multiplicity of perspectives, “level sands stretch far away” (Shelley, 1876)
Opening Thoughts
Homo Noxius — Arsehole Man — is a conclusion often drawn about one of Nietzsche’s core ideas, will to power. While misguided, it is not at all implausible in light of another of his core ideas. For it can be said to reflect the perspective of the individual who draws it.
Perspectivism is central to Nietzsche’s critique of the traditional Platonic idealistic conception of truth and knowledge that was adapted by early Christian influencers. For Nietzsche, truth and, therefore, knowledge necessarily follow — arise from — subjective conscious experience. In other words, truth and knowledge are inescapably perspectival. And this is not limited to just religious belief.
“Against positivism [science], which halts at phenomena — “There are only facts” — I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations.” (WP, §481, p. 267)
An implication of this is the incoherence of the idea of ‘absolute truth’, which is, unsurprisingly of a literal reading of Nietzsche, paradoxical. For it seemingly entails its own objection. After all, to say that truth and knowledge are perspectival is to make a universal claim that they are not universal. Clearly an absurdity, right? I mean, we all have ‘our own truth’ now, don’t we?
A little too cynical, too ironic? Not really. For this is what Nietzsche’s perspectivism looks like ‘in the wild of the world’ uncensored by the analytical abstractions of science or philosophy. It both arises from, and entails, the messiness of persons — being human. And herein lies the most intractable of philosophical paradoxes.
In spite of these kinds of uninhabited theories and stories we recite about the ‘truth’ of Nietzsche, or the world, we are the ones writing and telling them. Yet we do so beyond the rarefied, esoteric air of science or philosophy in our day-to-day experiences in the . In this light, the value of Nietzsche’s perspectivism lies in what it does, not what it is.
A Bit of Perspective
The traditional idea of truth and, therefore, knowledge, in western culture is that it is to be discovered ‘out there’ in some perfect form. All we need is the pure light of reason to illuminate it — ‘The Truth’. Or ‘God’.
Think: Plato’s allegory of the cave — life, the world as it appears to us, is an imperfect shadow of the ‘true’/perfect/ideal world. Knowledge lies there under the light of pure reason. The apparent similarity to the Christian ideal of ‘God’ is not coincidental. Or so the story goes.
For Nietzsche, the perfect world outside the cave, and the cave itself, are a ‘lie’. Or maybe a little less pejorative, an illusion — a mismatch between how things appear and how they are. This illusion was appropriated into the Christian ideal. Yet, it did not die when we killed God with science. It anchors the leap of faith that grounds the western cultural tradition of truth and knowledge.
The leap of faith is inescapable. How else do we get from the world to the truth of it so we can ‘know’ it? By means of faith in the positivist ‘truth’ that Science = The-Only-Truth-About-the-World. It is no more than a bait-and-switch with a terrible twist — what science is, is not ‘wrong’ or ‘false’ as such.
The scientific method is the benchmark for quantifying and describing the empirical — ‘natural’ — world. It supposes a metaphysical claim about the nature of reality which purports to ground the leap of faith. Add in modern technology, and it has undoubtedly enabled us to attain great improvements for humanity, and equally great existential threats, making the leap of faith seemingly trivial — unquestionable.
Yet, as Nietzsche pointed out, a problem arises when science is supposed as the only source of meaningful knowledge and, therefore, human ‘progress’. As even a cursory understanding of evolution of human societies shows, science is neither necessary nor sufficient to draw meaning from life as we consciously experience it. How otherwise do we explain not-science stuff like, say, art in any meaningful, non-question begging, non-nihilistic, way?
Nietzsche’s perspectivism not only rejects the ‘lie’ of Platonic dualism and Christianity that there is an absolute ‘truth’, it also rejects such claims made of science.
“Against positivism [science], which halts at [objective] phenomena — “There are only facts” — I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations.” (WP, §481, p. 267)
So what of our subjective conscious experiences of the world? Are these ‘interpretations’? And if there are no ‘facts’, what of truth and knowledge?
The Problem of Relativity
Nietzsche’s perspectivism is undoubtedly true in that our subjective conscious experiences of the world necessarily precede knowledge. Yet, we ‘know’ our subjective conscious experiences of day-to-day life simply by being them. This was Descartes’ breakthrough insight — the one thing we cannot doubt is that we are our subjective conscious experiences of life. The pluralistic implications are obvious, if not a little scary.
Is Nietzsche arguing for subjective relativism? Having announced the death of God, did he also call the ‘post-truth’ world? Can we just make up any old shit and say it is true because it is ‘our own truth’?
No, no, and no. Perspectivism admits to no more than the life-world being naturally pluralistic. It is necessarily the object of a multiplicity of subjective (human) perspectives. A shared belief about the ‘reality’ of life. In other words, perspectivism neither denies objective truths, nor affirms subjective relativism. But, it does undoubtedly entail objective truth. For nothing of what we can say we know about the world, or ourselves, would make any sense otherwise.
The objective reality of the life-world is essentially dualistic or, maybe better put, fundamentally relational. No more, or less, than this. The rest is up to us.
In this sense, we can say perspectivism entails conflict. It is inevitable. But, to suppose conflict is necessarily negative in the commonly understood sense of material violence is deeply problematic. This was not lost on Nietzsche. There is an indirect relationship between violence and truth/knowledge.
“There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective “knowing”; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our “concept” of this thing, our “objectivity”, be.” (GM, III, §12, p119, bolding and bold italics are my emphasis)
This passage is fundamental to understanding Nietzsche’s perspectivism. It distinguishes it from the implied scary existential anarchy of subjective relativism. Nietzsche is not saying everyone’s ‘truth’ is equally ‘objectively true’. He is saying objective ‘truths’ arise naturally from subjective perspectives. In other words, a kind of correspondence theory of truth which is necessarily relational in theory, until it manifests in the life-world. At which point it becomes transactional.
So, where does this leave us?
The Truth of a Tango
Nietzsche’s perspectivism in and of itself is impotent. Sure, it is something that can be ‘known’ in theory. But what does it mean to ‘know’ it in the ‘real world’ of our day-to-day conscious experiences of life? How it manifests in our lives is where things get real.
An old friend, let us call him Mark, is of southern Slavic heritage. He is also a devout Catholic with a deeply held belief that God exists which he ‘knows’ to be pre-theoretically true. In other words, he accepts it as being the case that God exists and does not — in fact, long-ago chose to not ever — analyse the proposition either in part, or in whole. It is for him, as the saying goes, an article of faith. As is engineering (physics).
Mark’s religious beliefs are ironic. He is one of the most rational, empirical, pedantically thorough people I have known. These traits made him a brilliant engineer (he is retired) and a highly qualified and respected amateur pilot. We worked together on a number of large, city-changing, high profile and controversial infrastructure projects, throughout which we built a deep, respectful friendship, notwithstanding often ‘robust’ differences of opinion. Yet we no longer stay in touch.
It is a longish story which doesn’t warrant recounting in much detail. Suffice to say for now, a couple of years ago he made a nasty, judgmental remark about trans people over dinner. Not just nasty, but repugnant. It lacked even a basic level of compassion and understanding for the suffering of a fellow human.
In light of his generally liberal views expressed over a twenty-five-year friendship, I was shocked and reacted without thinking. I can’t recall exactly what my response was, other than a kind of appeal to compassion and basic human dignity exemplified in the nature of Christ. It was probably made clumsy by emotional memories of how it feels to be ‘othered’, and undoubtedly came across as a scolding.
Unsurprisingly, our long-standing friendship broke. I tried recently to arrange a coffee-meet. He said he’d have to think about it. He felt I had disrespected his religion and, in doing so, disrespected him. No amount of apology and explanation that my respect for him as a person was not contingent on his religious beliefs, or differences of opinion, patched the deep personal tear.
I have never danced the tango. In fact, dancing of any and all kinds is not something that comes naturally. Not literally speaking, at least. Mentally, however, the idea of movement, of flow, feels close to describing a quality of interactions not only with others, but also with ideas. In fact, most particularly with ideas. Even more so as I have gotten older.
As it turns out, the old joke about ‘dancing on the inside’ can be said to hold just as much for ideas, as it does in ‘real-life’ for those with two left feet. Put in terms of perspectivism, some people have limits of inquiry beyond which they simply will not go. Rather sadly, I found with Mark this limit was also the boundary of what had been a long, deep friendship.
So, what is it about changing our minds when we feel like people tread on our feelings?
Beyond Ozymandias
Over the years, what I now know to be metaphysical questions have always come to mind. For a young me, it seemed most people simply ‘got stuff’ about ‘life’ that I could not grasp. As if there was some kind of foundational existential frame of reference that brought ‘the world’ undoubtedly into focus. As if Plato’s allegory of the cave was actually true of the world.
Questions such as why some people’s faith in God seems unshakeable perplexed me. Not their belief that God exists, or even whether God exists, but what is it about an idea that is sufficiently ‘sticky’ to resist doubt? There is some social psychology research on wisdom that posits an explanation for this known as the implicit theory of change (Dweck et al, ITC, pp. 267–285). And it is nothing to do with the idea, but everything to do with us.
In a nutshell, implicit theory says that our potential to change our minds is a function of a deeply-held belief about our intrinsic ability to do so. It can be broadly classified as fixed or flexible. In rough practical terms, for some people the world and their sense of identity is “as it has always been”. For others, it is not so black and white. Things change, people change, and yet life in the ‘world’ is no less real.
But it is not a binary — an ‘either/or’. It is also a function of the nature of the belief being challenged. The more existential the belief — such as those we associate with our sense of personal identity — the greater the resistance to change. Or, put in terms of the process that is central to a much maligned and misunderstood concept of Nietzsche’s — Übermensch, or ‘over-person(man)’ — the greater the resistance to self-overcoming, to development and growth as a person.
In eastern traditions, this is otherwise known as a ‘spiritual goal’. Whether Nietzsche thought along these lines I have yet to discover but, in any event, the similarities are obvious, if coincidental. Just as it seems obviously, coincidentally, similar in concept to the Socratic maxim — an unexamined life is not worth living. To progress in life entails examination of our self.
So what, if anything, is the measure against which ‘life’ is to be examined? What is it of value that we would compare ourselves to — judge our perspectives against? If we stay bound to Nietzsche, we simply don’t know, for he did not complete his vision of values in a post-God western society.
Sure, there are hints, suggestions, indications, from which many have speculated. But the simple fact is that the ‘Nietzsche’ that thought up an arguably revolutionary reimagination of what it is to be human, did not see out the ‘revolution’. Shelley’s insight on hubris is instructive — nothing remains of the King of Kings for the Mighty (and not-so-Mighty) that follow (Shelley, O, 1876, p. 72). All we have left is the colossal Wreck of Nietzsche’s unfinished work. However, while the “lone and level sands [do indeed] stretch far away,” they are not uninhabited.
What is unmistakeable — well, I think it is — is that the ‘promise’ inherent in Nietzsche’s ‘revelation’ about God and truth is getting increasingly closer to maturation, at least in western societies. It can be best summarised by the recent appearance of the idea of a ‘post-truth world’ in popular culture and society more broadly, even as the idea has been theorised about in different ways since Nietzsche.
In this light, our ‘own truth’ is as true as it is nihilistic, because it invites the delusion of absoluteness. The more we believe this to be true, the more we usher in a kind of societal decline, an erosion of cohesion, that feels a little like what Nietzsche tried to warn us of. And it won’t be science and technology that will arrest this, even as it purports to be able to change it. For agency, like violence, exists only in virtue of a common denominator.
Closing Thoughts
So, what, if anything, might be drawn from this somewhat pessimistic picture? If we accept perspectivism, then where to from here?
While I feel I have a better understanding of Nietzsche’s perspectivism from a personal perspective, it was sad to learn how fragile the easy intimacy of deep friendship actually is. How easily fractured it is in a zero-sum-game perspective of life.
What of value is had from such an approach to life? Other than a fleeting satisfaction of ‘besting’ someone. Of ‘winning’. Or feeling somehow vindicated about one’s own righteousness. Rather than doing violence on a thought, an idea, we did violence on each other by killing a deeply personal relationship.
Yes, we can say this is how ‘life’ is. But, this is not what Nietzsche’s perspectivism says. A more obvious, yet ironic, conclusion to that of Homo Noxious is that Nietzsche left us with a choice. Our perspectives lie somewhere between contraries — a mix of happenstance and volition.
Against this, science and technology posit a thoroughly deterministic inhuman universe, in spite of the existence of humans. This is what introduces the seeming paradox. Yet, against this, and in light of Nietzsche’s criticism of Christian free will, we nonetheless think and act as if we have a choice — we have faith in the idea of free will understood as choice. As if there is no paradox.
What we find in the level sands stretching beyond perspectivism is that this ‘choice’ is influenced by the extent to which we are prepared to admit we all have something in common. And, necessarily, to what extent we value this commonality over negation beyond the existential necessity of physical survival. In this light, Nietzsche’s death of God was no deicide at all, merely an inflection point that flagged a shift of ground for this common value.
What might we mean by ‘God’? Well, that is an entirely different article. Suffice to say for now that ‘Science’ it is not, even as we mistake it as such. After all, how can we value something as being the entire and only meaningful story of the world that says the most important part of what we are is alien to, or at least not a meaningful part of, the narrative?
For now, let’s end on a hopeful note. Perspectivism entails collective self-overcoming. It must do so to remain coherent. In other words, changing the trajectory of contemporary western societies in positive, life-affirming ways, is a possibility. And maybe crucial to this possibility is the idea of a shift from life being perceived as fundamentally transactional in a primal existential sense, to life being lived as intrinsically relational in a flourishing human society sense.
If we draw any conclusion from Nietzsche’s perspectivism it is surely this. After all, as Douglas Adams so wisely observed, how can we know we are having fun if there is no-one around watching us have it?
Funny thing that, eh? To have looked into this idea, only to find that we cannot make sense of it from the outside.
References
- GM > Nietzsche, F., 1989, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Kaufmann, W. and Hollingdale, R., Vintage Books Edition.
- ITC > Dweck, C., et al, 1995, “Implicit Theories and Their Role in Judgements and Reactions: A World from Two Perspectives,” Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 6, №4, pp. 267–285.
- O > Shelley, P. B., 1876, ‘Ozymandias’ in Rosalund and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; with Other Poems, C. and J. Ollier print.
- WP > Nietzsche, F., 1968 (1901), The Will to Power, trans. Kaufmann, W. and Hollingdale, R., Vintage Books Edition.
