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Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'Machine Man' and 'Writings from Late Notebooks'

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5 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 3. Subjectivism

7149	Comprehending everything is impossible, because it abolishes perspectives [Nietzsche]
	Full Idea: 'Comprehending everything' - that would mean abolishing all perspectival relations, that would mean comprehending nothing, mistaking the nature of the knower.
	From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 01[114])
	A reaction: The point here, I take it, is not just that there is too much to comprehend, but that comprehending is partly a subjective matter. Personally I am drawn to the opposite pole, expressed by Spinoza (Idea 4840).

7169	Is the perspectival part of the essence, or just a relation between beings? [Nietzsche]
	Full Idea: Fundamental question: whether the perspectival is part of the essence, and not just a form of regarding, a relation between various beings?
	From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[12])
	A reaction: I don't personally understand how the perspectival could be part of the essence of anything. If everything is perspectival, then perspectives are limits, and essences are unknowable. It seems to me that we have learned a lot about essences.

7182	'Perspectivism': the world has no meaning, but various interpretations give it countless meanings [Nietzsche]
	Full Idea: Inasmuch as the word 'knowledge' has any meaning at all, the world is knowable: but it is variously interpretable; it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings. 'Perspectivism'.
	From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[60])
	A reaction: This account sounds like Humean 'projectivism', espoused by Simon Blackburn - meanings are projected onto a meaningless world. If nearly all of our perspectives agreed, might that not be because they were all true?

7183	'Subjectivity' is an interpretation, since subjects (and interpreters) are fictions [Nietzsche]
	Full Idea: 'Everything is subjective', you say: but that itself is an interpretation, for the 'subject' is not something given but a fiction added on, tucked behind. Even the interpreter behind the interpretation is a fiction, hypothesis.
	From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[60])
	A reaction: How glorious to even suggest that the subjective account of knowledge is making too many assumptions! If modern students of philosophy were to meet Nietzsche, they would be reduced to the response of Cratylus (Idea 578).

7133	There are different eyes, so different 'truths', so there is no truth [Nietzsche]
	Full Idea: There are many different eyes, .... and consequently there are many different 'truths', and consequently there is no truth.
	From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[230])
	A reaction: Sorry, I just don't follow this. Most people see the same things with their eyes, even if the perspective is subtly different. If we are puzzled by what we see, we swap places to check it. Nietzsche's life was too solitary. Some 'truths' are wrong.