Approaching Perspectivism: A Response to the Commentaries

Response to Ansell Pearson

I discussed Nietzsche (and not, for example, Hume) because it is Nietzsche and those figures who were particularly influenced by him (such as Gadamer, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and others) who are among the central figures in certain debates in the psychoanalytic community. Also, scholars, very much aware of the kind of context Ansell Pearson has in mind, do single out Nietzsche as a central figure in certain contemporary discussions and debates. Stanley Rosen (1995) suggests that “what I am calling postmodernism for convenience is surely right to claim Nietzsche as its decisive ancestor. Nietzsche, more so than Feuerbach, Marx, or other great figures of the nineteenth century, initiates what Heidegger called the Destruktion of the tradition . . .” (vii).

In addition, scholars don’t always write on a philosopher with an emphasis on context, as is the case with my commentators Hales and Welshon. If one is going to attend to context and tradition, why stop with the figures mentioned by Ansell Pearson? The development of Nietzsche’s thought on issues under discussion is “largely unintelligible” without an understanding of other figures; for example, Schopenhauer and F. A. Lange.

Hume

Ansell Pearson refers to my “naïve” question that, if we are “wired” only for “illusions and fictions,” how can we make “justified causal claims regarding the effects of our falsifications, illusions, or fictions?” He states that Hume presents a sophisticated solution to this problem (although he acknowledges that Hume’s solution is not completely satisfactory). But what he goes on to say simply doesn’t address, much less answer, the question I raise.

Hume makes knowledge claims of certain kinds. He makes causal assumptions and claims in his arguments, sometimes using phrases like “is derived from” or “leads to,” but at other times directly discussing the “causes” that induce certain of our illusory beliefs. He does not avoid causal assumptions and claims as he describes the development and functioning of our impressions and ideas or how we arrive at our unjustifiable causal assumptions and beliefs. Regarding the formation of beliefs about the future based on our past experience, Hume writes that “this belief is the necessary result of placing the mind in such circumstances” (An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, section V, part I). At certain points in his causal accounts, Hume abandons his skepticism about the senses and assumes the existence of a real external world. All of this relates to the problem for Hume of the very conditions he must assume for the possibility of his endeavor.

Ansell Pearson suggests that what I offer on perspectivism doesn’t indicate what is particularly novel about Nietzsche’s contributions as compared to how these same ideas might be said to characterize the thought of others, particularly Hume. This is possible. Hume explored a number of issues later explored by Nietzsche. Searle (1995) suggests that it may have been Hume who first recognized the centrality of background beliefs in explaining human cognition (132). However, various aspects of Nietzsche’s perspectivism to which I refer or allude in my paper (for example, the purposes of, and uses to which Nietzsche puts our entrance into different perspectives and affects) are not developed in the same way or to the same extent by Hume. But I do not know exactly what Ansell Pearson has in mind because he does not point out which aspects of perspectivism as I present it are (as he sees it) found in Hume. (He also doesn’t inform us of what he regards as Nietzsche’s particular contributions.)

Popper

Regarding Ansell Pearson’s discussion of Popper, whatever the role and value of deriving testable propositions from theories and putting them to the test of falsification, most of us find an important place for positive evidence in support of our beliefs and theories and in determining which of our beliefs and theories are more or less justified. (There are degrees of justification. We can consider with Haack [1995] that, while specific judgments of justification are perspectival, there may be an “underlying commonality of criteria of evidence” [208]. Also, there are often criteria that are neutral...