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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Truth and Predication' and 'The Gay (Joyful) Science'

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3 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 1. Relativism
We assume causes, geometry, motion, bodies etc to live, but they haven't been proved [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: We have fixed up a world for ourselves in which we can live, with bodies, lines, planes, causes, motion and form; without these articles of faith nobody would endure life. But that does not mean they have been proved. Life is no argument.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §121)
     A reaction: It is hard to disagree. A lot of recent thought suggests that they are Hume's 'natural beliefs', like truth and induction, which simply can't be proved. 'Unprovable' does not mean 'incorrect', however.
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 3. Subjectivism
Nietzsche's perspectivism says our worldview depends on our personality [Nietzsche, by Fogelin]
     Full Idea: Nietzsche recommends an extreme version of perspectivism in holding that a person's view of the world is a function of that person's life-affirming (Heraclitean) or life-denying (Parmenidean) personality.
     From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.3
     A reaction: Fogelin recommends Nehamas on this topic. I am not convinced Nietzsche takes such an individual view as is implied here. See Idea 4420, for example. This view is in tune with Charles Taylor's view that our values shape our understanding of our selves.
It would be absurd to say we are only permitted our own single perspective [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: I think today we are at least far removed from the ridiculous immodesty of decreeing from our corner that one is permitted to have perspectives only from this corner.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §374)
     A reaction: He goes on to speculate about the possibility of infinite perspectives, most of them unknowable to us. But Nietzsche was not a simple relativism. The obvious concept needed to accompany a many-perspectives view is consensus.