At this point I'm at least vaguely familiar with Nietzsche's perspectivism (GM 3.12 below, HAH, I, 618 or "argonauts of the ideal" GS 382) but I wonder about Nz's view in comparison to, say, a Keirkegaardian or Dostoevskian perspectivism. In Kierkegaard's case we have the pseudononymous authorship which must reflect some similar commitment though I don't know the extent of it. In Dostoevsky's case, the Brothers Karamazov stands as a monument to perspectivism (especially "The Grand Inquisitor") about certain views. I get the feeling Dostoevsky thoroughly understood each perspective he presents personally. Where Nietzsche articulates a perspectivism in pursuit of knowledge, I see Dostoevsky as articulating a perspectivism as an extension of a troubled psychology in the service of art. The idea being that a more troubled psyche may have the capacity for deeper commitment to alternate perspectives (think Tyler Durden). He embodies one and then the other; this is not at all healthy but it is at the core of what it means to be human.
I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this subject.
-- But precisely because we seek knowledge, let us not be ungrateful to such resolute reversals of accustomed perspectives and valuations with which the spirit has, with apparent mischievousness and futility, raged against itself for so long: to see differently in this way for once, to want to see differently, is no small discipline and preparation for its future "objectivity" -- the latter understood not as "contemplation without interest" (which is a nonsensical absurdity), but as the ability to control one's Pro and Con and to dispose of them, so that one knows how to employ a variety of perspectives and affective interpretations 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 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"; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity," be. But to eliminate the will altogether, to suspend each and every affect, supposing we were capable of this -- what would that mean but to castrate the intellect?
Nietzsche GM 3.12
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