The "Subject" of Nietzsche's Perspectivism

The "Subject" of Nietzsche's Perspectivism CHRISTOPH COX FORMERLY TAKEN TO ENDORSE a profound skepticism and relativism, Nietzsche 's "doctrine of perspectivism" recently has been seen to fit within traditional conceptions of epistemology and ontology? In the most recent and influential study of the matter, Maudemarie Clark maintains that, properly understood, perspectivism is "an obvious and nonproblematic doctrine. ''~ In a similar vein, Brian Leiter has recently argued that "perspectivism turns out to be much less radical than is usually supposed," that, with this doctrine, "Nietzsche .., is merely rehashing familiar Kantian themes, minus the rigor of Kant's exposition."~ According to both Clark and Leiter, perspectivism simply ' With occasional alterations, Nietzsche's texts willbe quoted from the Kaufmann/Hollingdale translations and cited in the text according to standard abbreviations of their English titles followed by the section and/or paragraph number(s). The exception is "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense," which is cited by page number from Philosophy and Truth: Selectionsfrom Nietzsche 'sNotebooks of the Early x87os, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (NewJersey: Humanities Press International, 1979), 79-9x. Abbreviations are as follows:A: The Antichrist; BGE:Beyond Good and Evil; BT/SC: Birth of Tragedy, "Attempt at a Self-Criticism"; D: Daybreak; GM: On the Genealogy of Morals; GS: The Gay Science; TI: Twilight of the Idols; TL: "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense"; UM: Untimely Meditations; WP: The Will to Power; Z: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Where these translations have been modified, I have consulted the Werke: Kritische Studienansgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (New York/Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967-t988), cited as KSA,followed by the volume, page, and fragment numbers. 2Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 199o), 135. 3Brian Leiter, "Perspectivism in Nietzsche's GenealogyofMorals," in Nietzsche, Genealogy,Morality :Essays on Nietzsche's Genealogy ofMorals, ed. Richard Schacht (Berkeley: University of California Press, ~994), 351. Leiter borrows this second phrase from Ken Gemes, "Nietzsche's Critique of Truth," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52 (1992): 49, who, in fact, disagrees with the claim. Yet Leiter finds the characterization appropriate, adding that "this is not a problem, particularly since Nietzsche's primary concerns lie elsewhere," namely, "with philosophical theories of agency and value" (351-52). [269] 270 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35:2 APRIL 1997 presents an analogy between certain obvious features of human vision and less immediately obvious features of human knowledge.4 I will argue that Nietzsche's perspectivism is less obvious, more problematic , and more interesting than these recent accounts take it to be. Moreover, the perspectivism I attribute to Nietzsche undermines a central presupposition of these accounts: namely, that there exists a simple, stable subject who has perspectives. Before turning to the notion of subjectivity affirmed by Nietzsche's perspectivism, a word must be said about the "doctrine of perspectivism" itself. 1. PERSPECTIVE AND AFFECTIVE INTERPRETATION AS the name of a doctrine, "perspectivism" is a critical construct. The term is found only once in Nietzsche's published work5 and only twice in The Will to Power, the well-known collection of his unpublished notes. 6 Moreover, the term is misleading, since it suggests that a visual metaphor provides the key to Nietzsche's theory of knowledge. But this is not the case. Indeed, in the passage on perspectivity that both Clark and Leiter take to be decisive,7 Nietzsche intimately associates the notion of "perspective" with a very different, nonvisual notion: that of "affective interpretation." Nietzsche writes: "[O]bjectivity" [ought to be] understood not as "contemplation without interest" (which is a nonsensical absurdity), but as the ability to have one's For and Against under control and to engage and disengage them, so that one knows how to employ a variety of perspectives and affective interpretations [Perspectiven und Affect-lnterpretationen] in the service of knowledge. Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject"; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as "pure reason," "absolute spirituality," "knowledge in itself": these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an...