A View on Perspectivism :: Philosophy Philosophical Essays

A View on Perspectivism Perspectivism is the doctrine that most or all stupendous philosophical questions deal mevery proposed answers, and many regards 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. T here are both historical and theoretical reasons for embracing this view. Historically, it is manifest that though philosophers have often attained views which are highly refreshing to themselves face-to-facely, few perspectives have won a con sensus plane in their own times, and n star 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 a mount to just a widely accepted view with widely accepted counters to arguments against it. We may note certain alternatives to and variations on the perspectivists thesis. thither is first of all what we might call the standard position, namely, that there may be many perspectives on a given question, alone 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 straightforward view but we cant get it and wouldnt 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 hold 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 way s and degrees and for varying purposes and persons. Then there is the view that the perspective we appropriate 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.