A View on Perspectivism :: Philosophy Philosophical Essays

A View on Perspectivism Perspectivism is the doctrine that most or all large philosophical questions have many proposed answers, and many views on how to judge between those proposed answers, and that intelligent people of good will are likely to continue to have differing perspectives on these large questions of philosophy indefinitely. There are both historical and theoretical reasons for embracing this view. Historically, it is manifest that though philosophers have often attained views which are highly satisfying to themselves personally, few perspectives have won a con sensus even in their own times, and none have won a consensus over time. (I refer here to a consensus on some positive view; a consensus on the falsity of views, usually older ones, may be commonly found. But even long rejected views are liable to unexpected resurrections.) In any case, even agreement of near miraculous extent would not prove any thing anyway and would amount to just a widely accepted view with widely accepted count ers to arguments against it. We may note certain alternatives to and variations on the perspectivist's thesis. There is first of all what we might call the standard position, namely, that there may be many perspectives on a given question, but all but one of them are wrong and can in principle be shown to be so. There is classical skepticism holding that there is a true view but we can't get it and wouldn't know it if we did. There are also the relatively more recent views that large philosophical questions are meaningless (as in positivism) or illusory (as in analytic philosophy). There is what we might call the existential view that there are many views and we may appropriate one according to our own free decision or freely selected standard of evaluation. There is the pragmatic view, that there are many views and many of them are of personal interest and many may indeed be considered true in varying ways and degrees and for varying purposes and persons. Then there is the view that the perspective we a ppropriate tends to become true in varying ways and degrees, at least for the subject, so that we create our world in varying ways and degrees. Finally, there is the view that we do not so much search for a view, find a view, choose a view, but rather that our views arise in us more as a consequence of our culture, temperament, or character than of our reasoning powers.