The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century

by Michael N Forster

  I will focus on the paradoxes arising for Nietzsche’s nineteenth-century version that are said to reduce it to self-refutation, vicious circularity, and incoherence. It is significant, however, that not all varieties of perspectivism are plagued by paradox. I will begin with seventeenth and eighteenth century versions and mark Nietzsche’s departures from them, in order to bring out what is peculiarly paradoxical about his nineteenth-century innovations.

  At its origins, perspectivism grew out of a visual metaphor of the seeing eye. This spatial model is not surprising considering the very term, “perspective,” is one derived from painting.1 Originally, the perceptual sense of perspectivism comes from Leibniz [1646–1716], who bases it on an analogy to seeing a city from different points of view.2 Leibniz’s metaphor of the eye very likely influenced Johann Martin Chladenius [1710–59], whose perspectivism is closely associated with his systematic development of hermeneutical method.3 Chladenius’ basic principles and rules for interpreting historical texts, secular as well as sacred,4 depended on a distinctively perspectival kind of interpretation. Chladenius gives a literal sense to perspectivism, by associating it with the contributions that the eye and the body make to interpretation. The perception of a physical body has an infinite number of sides. One and the same object or event can be viewed from many different viewpoints, so that there can be different, even conflicting judgments about it. The content of the observer’s perception will vary, depending on the viewpoint or position from which the object is viewed (Einleitung, ch. 8, §308; 186–7). This literal sense of perspectivism, based on the perceptual organ of the eye and condition of the body, was later taken up by a contemporary of Chladenius, Alexander Baumgarten [1714–62]. Baumgarten said the soul perceives the world from the perspective of the body.5

  Notice that there is nothing paradoxical about seeing an object from various angles. This is simply what we all have to do, given our perceptual limitations. Our access to objects is limited to our perceptual sensations, as they shift with varying viewpoints; thus, our representations of the object may be contradicted depending on different standpoints. There seems to be no unity among our representations. But a commonsense realism pervades early perspectivalist doctrine. The analogy with perception points the way to a commonsense perceptual realism: errors and distortions in perception imply there is something with respect to which a mistaken interpretation counts as a distortion.6 Namely, there is a perceptual object that stays unified and unchanging throughout, despite our shifting viewpoints.

  For instance, a commonsense realism pervades Chladenius’ historical and literary perspectivism. Our interpretations of one and the same historical truths may be different and contradictory, depending on our standpoints. But each historical narrative must be seen as one facet of a much larger universal narrative. For he thinks there is only one and the same historical reality, which we grasp from different viewpoints at different times (Einleitung, ch. 8, §§318–19; 195–6). That is, the same historical truths are handed down through the generations, without any essential change in meaning (Einleitung; ch. 8, 421; 305). Given Chladenius’ faith in an unchanging historical record, it was thought we could make the historical narratives agree. Perspectivism was proposed as an attractive method for resolving the inconsistencies among the narratives. All the narratives, when taken together, were thought to give us a glimpse into something unchanging throughout history.

  In connection with literary-historical perspectivism, we may class another contemporary of Chladenius, David Hume [1711–76], among the original eighteenth-century perspectivalists. Robert Fogelin gives a “Two Humes” interpretation that suggests a perspectivalist reading of Hume’s theoretical writings.7 We may extend Fogelin’s perspectival reading of Hume to matters of taste as well.8 The use of historical-literary perspectivism is particularly in evidence in Hume’s famous essay, “On the Standard of Taste.”9 The essay begins with the problem that taste is natural, hence, a natural diversity of taste prevails, in the sense that Herder had in mind.10 Hume even allows that expert critics will disagree among themselves over particulars. But this variety of taste, he thinks, is in fact “greater in appearance than in reality.” He draws on historical perspectivism to resolve conflicts in taste, by giving a genealogy of art history. From within a genealogical-historical framework, it is clear that disagreements arise from different perspectives. But like the commonsense realism of Chladenius, Hume too believes in an unchanging historical record. He thinks the history of art stays relatively calm and stable. The passage of time can’t change our faith in a unified, unchanging historical truth. While viewpoints about taste may vary within an age, they don’t vary across the ages. Hume similarly draws his faith in a commonsense perceptual realism based on the analogy to the eye. As with errors in perceptual judgments, distortions and errors in aesthetics judgments and interpretations that inevitably arise within an age will eventually get factored out over the ages. An enduring consensus about what is good in art—a “standard of taste”—will form around certain “timeless” paradigmatic works, whose value endures over time.11

  Thus it is significant that perspectivism, in its proto-Nietzschean versions, was not used as a destructive dialectical or skeptical strategy to attack traditional conceptions of epistemology, truth, ontology, theology, morals, and aesthetics. Originally, eighteenth-century varieties of perspectivism were used to refute skepticism.12 Perspectivism was meant to solve the problem that there seems to be no unity of judgments and beliefs held from different standpoints. Chladenius used literary-historical perspectivism to arrive at a unity of historical interpretation. Even a hard core skeptic, such as Hume, used a perspectival approach as a way of overcoming conflicting aesthetic judgments, in order to establish a unity in judgment about what is good in art: a standard of taste. Rather than use historical perspectivism as a skeptical or destructive strategy, he used it to refute aesthetic skepticism and to arrive at a conclusion of aesthetic realism.13 And that, in short, is why eighteenth-century varieties of perspectivism do not get entangled in paradox.

  32.2 NIETZSCHE’S PERSPECTIVISM

  By contrast, Nietzsche’s later nineteenth-century version is plagued by paradox. He never develops his version of perspectivism systematically anywhere.14 But significantly,

  in a key passage he starts from the same analogy with the eye as did his predecessors, Leibniz, Chladenius, and Baumgarten:

  An eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective “knowing.”

  (GM, III, 12)

  Nietzsche here breaks free from the classical doctrine of objectivity that there is a totalizing comprehension and conceptual articulation of an order of reality existing independently of the way that our cognitive apparatus interprets it. We may wish to comprehend an object completely from all sides. Thus, his perspectivism encourages us “To learn to see—to accustom the eye to composure, to patience, to letting things come to it; to put off all judgment, to learn to walk around all sides of the individual case and comprehend it from all sides” (TI, “What the Germans are Missing,” 6). But he insists here that to experience a sensation or affect from no perspective (free of interpretation) is an absurdity.

  Notice there is nothing paradoxical about perspectivism involving two or more ways of seeing the same object. We think that seeing something from the greatest number of perspectives will teach us more about its nature. We think “the more eyes, different eyes we can use to observe one thing,” the more complete will be our concept of the object (GM, III, 12; GS, 374; WP, 481, 556, 600). But he thinks this is a myth. There is no conceiving of a world from the point of view of a disinterested, passive observer trying to ascertain objective, unified “facts” from a totalizing standpoint (WP, 481). Cognition depends on a distinctively human perspective, which is info
rmed by our biological drives, unconscious affects, and interested values, and which is somehow linked indispensably to natural conditions that make the life of the knower possible. So far, no paradox.

  Yet, despite these resemblances to the original, Nietzsche goes beyond the literal sense of seeing from a perspective. He draws further inferences and meanings from the immediate, literal sense, which adds further interpretations and judgments missing in his predecessors. Whereas originally perspectivism was used to refute skepticism, Nietzsche uses it to derive skeptical consequences about a wide range of subject matters, such as, truth, ontology, epistemology, science, religion, ethics, and aesthetics. His perspectivism has been characterized as skeptical insofar as its negative claims cluster around anti-metaphysical pronouncements regarding truth, substance, cause, agency, God, and the self.15 Whether one interprets Nietzsche’s further consequences as skeptical, antirealist, or relativistic conclusions (on a strong reading, anyway), these modern additions are conspicuously missing in the eighteenth century versions. When conflicts arise between what we observe from different standpoints, the earlier versions maintained a realism about the unity of the object and sought a unity of interpretation. But rather than reconcile these conflicts with a unifying thesis, Nietzsche responds with a skeptical thesis about the incomprehensibility and lack of translatability of what we perceive from one standpoint into another. And these modern add-ons are what entangles Nietzsche’s nineteenth century version in paradox.

  32.3 NORMATIVE TENSIONS: VARIATIONS

  To avoid paradox, we cannot simply detach Nietzsche’s skeptical commitments from his perspectivism, leaving over the core original sense on which no such paradoxes arise. Unlike earlier versions, Nietzsche’s skepticism is deeply entrenched in his perspectival thought. Skeptical method is used at all levels of his thought and is undetachable from his perspectival method. To gauge the extent to which his skepticism is embedded in his thought, we may note at least four areas in which his perspectivism gives rise to a common normative paradox. He claims to be skeptical about norms and values, yet a preponderance of values, norms, and preferences would seem to infect his stance of value neutrality. He seems to be mixing up descriptions and evaluations. How do we reconcile his skeptical commitments with his bald-faced norms and values?

  First, normative tensions seem to arise in his epistemology. Nietzsche takes a perspectival approach to truth and infers from it the skeptical consequence that “there is no truth” in an absolutist sense. That is, there is no knowledge available from an objective, independent, interest-free transcendent standpoint not of our own making. There is only a perspective seeing; only a perspective knowing. Yet, he does not think all perspectives are equally objectionable so as to be lumped together as equally false. His own interpretive efforts, as exemplified in his theory of perspectivism itself, are not on a par with the “very false” interpretations he is calling into question. Given the likeness of perspectivism to a skeptical epistemology, how can Nietzsche prefer his own theory of truth to others? His preferences seem to come into conflict with his own leveling perspectivism, on which no one perspective should enjoy epistemic privilege over all others. This tension, between his skeptical commitments and the substantive content of the very statements he uses to put forward perspectivism, are absolutely fundamental and will be the focus of this chapter. The others are variants on this fundamental problem.

  Secondly, normative tensions arise for Nietzsche’s scientific valuations. He sweepingly condemns certain “bad” modes of science (scientific investigation) as “prejudices worth no more than astrology” (WP, 258). He dismisses the physicists’ mechanistic interpretation of the world as a “perversion of meaning,” involving a “bad mode of interpretation,” even “bad ‘philology’” (BGE, 22). He proposes to replace these inauthentic modes of scientific activity with superior modes that proceed “honestly.” The good scientist he lauds as a “good philologist”—that is, a subtle interpreter in the “art of reading well” (A, 52). His positive judgments turn on the extent to which the more authentic science practices good perspectival method in continuity with a naturalistic understanding of knowledge: one which allows for instincts, primal passions, and psychological forces, not yet recognized by nineteenth century scientific naturalism. In Human All too Human, he frequently praises the sciences and empirical method as “the best of all” methods, preferring it to “the worst of all methods of acquiring knowledge (i.e. a priori speculation)” (HH, I, 101).16 He has himself in mind when he lauds the thought of eternal recurrence as “the most scientific of all possible hypotheses” (WP, 55). What makes this problematic is this: how do we reconcile the positive scientific valuations that fall out of his naturalism with his skeptical epistemology?

  At the transition from scientific cognition to artistic cognition, a third variant of the normative paradox arises. In the Birth of Tragedy, he privileges artistic norms over scientific modes of cognition.17 Artistic norms come in by way of a naturalism, which he holds up as a standard of being faithful to the conditions of natural life. He finds this natural standard expressed paradigmatically in early Greek cults, religion, and culture. Greek tragedy captured this primal sense of nature, in which “artistic energies” burst forth from nature herself” (BT, 2). This experience was accessible only to instinctive, intuitive types. In particular, Dionysian art and religious-cult experiences were grounded naturalistically in the instinctive, immediate experiences of the body, and were able to retrieve experiences at this deeper, primordial level of nature. But why are some aesthetic values and valuations exempt from Nietzsche’s leveling perspectivism?

  A fourth tension between what is prescriptive and descriptive in Nietzsche’s thought arises at the juncture where perspectivism meets genealogy. Truth and values are connected for him, yet, from the skeptical claim, “Nothing is true,” he does not think it follows that “Everything is permitted!” (GM, III, 24: 150; WP, 602). Officially, genealogical method is supposed to bracket norms and values. A genealogy of morals is supposed to neutrally describe and question the value of values. That is, neutrally investigate the historically and culturally-situated character of normative matters, as they get played out in their diverse socio-cultural variations and historical configurations. Yet Nietzsche clearly prefers his own genealogical method as the more encompassing and comprehensive one (BGE, 186). He voices contempt for “the perverse species of genealogical hypothesis” to be found in the moral genealogists, such as Paul Rée, and his British predecessors, Hume and others.18 From within an ongoing genealogy, Nietzsche passes judgments which are—if not in content then in tone—shrill, critical, mocking, virulent denunciations of the weak humanism he finds in traditional moral systems. Thus a fourth variant on the normative question arises: how can Nietzsche justify his deep hatred for moralities and modes of conduct that he finds worthless and contemptible? How can he have strong values without violating his commitment to his leveling perspectivism and neutralizing genealogical method?19

  What gives these normative tensions an even wider scope and significance is that they would seem to generalize to Nietzsche-inspired models as such, threatening to infect whole areas of value-neutral discourse.20

  All four variations of the normative problem share a common, underlying tension: the judgments in question are not harmless, trivial ones, but substantive epistemological, scientific, aesthetic, and moral commitments. Nietzsche thinks nature determines the basic orientation our values can take; yet he brings his naturalistic norms and values into play alongside his skepticism in such a way that one seems to refute the gains of the other. How can Nietzsche promote strong values, in some naturalistic sense to be interpreted, so as not to be preempted by his skepticism? The point for our purposes is this: to resolve what is paradoxical about Nietzsche’s perspectivism, we cannot simply detach his skepticism, leaving over the core unproblematic sense as it originated in his predecessors. What is most distinctive about Nietzsche’s perspectivism is the scope and p
ower of his skepticism, as it appears at all levels of his thought, which was a consequence of eliminating what he thought was dogmatic and unjustified in the original versions: namely, the thesis of realism and the tendency to impose too much unity and coherence on interpretation. In his nondogmatic version, he has purposely built into perspectivism instabilities and paradoxes as a mechanism for safeguarding it against too much unity in interpretation.

  But notice that the solution to the normative paradoxes cannot be to deny that Nietzsche has strong values. The problem is not that he has values per se. He does not claim value neutrality by hiding behind a mask of neutrality. This is precisely what he condemns in reactive moralities: he thinks they mask their pathological motives behind illusions of truth and objectivity (BGE, 230: 160). He viscerally attacks Christian dogma for hiding its false motives and poisonous pathologies behind the guise of humanism and depriving life of a certain kind of meaning (A, 52). Whereas, he cheerfully admits that his own amoralism might be self-interested, value-laden, false, and deceptive. Still he prefers the “honest lies” of his amoralism to the “very false” and “dishonest lies” of ethical and religious dogma (GM, III, 19: 137; WP, 15; A, 56). He does not recommend an overcoming of morality altogether. In overcoming prevailing moral norms, he places his revitalized evaluative terms beyond them (“jenseits”), but not outside them. It would be preferable to embrace nihilism as a value rather than have no values at all: “better to will nothing than not to will at all.” Thus, a resolution of the tensions can’t be to downgrade Nietzsche’s values to surrogate values, or soften them to something so weak as not to come into conflict with his skeptical methods.21 For the problem was never with Nietzsche’s values per se.

  Far from eliminating all values, Nietzsche’s revitalized morality favors a new “value creator,” whose stronger, innovative values will herald the coming of an active, self-creating humanity. Further evaluation is implied in his very distinction between higher and lower types of culture.22 To restore to life the meaning that was lost, he seeks to reorient these new “value creators” naturalistically to the organic-biological conditions of life. In place of life-denying values, he reinterprets normative concepts and revitalizes them by drawing on a naturalism that grounds them in natural facts and dispositions about the life of the knower. The point is, in order to galvanize these higher types to action and achievement, nothing less than strong, full-blooded values will do.