Two Perspectives on Metaphysical Perspectivism: Nietzsche and Whitehead

Donald A. Crosby, Colorado State University

Metaphysical perspectivism can be succinctly defined as the view that all being is perspectival. This means that the world is made up of perspectives upon perspectives and perspectives within perspectives. There is nothing more ultimate or fundamental about it than these perspectives and their constituents, in their convergences and divergences. The perspectives are not mere irreducible minima but can range over many degrees of complexity, integration, or difference. Their character as perspectives means that no two of them can be completely congruent, no matter how closely related to one another particular ones of them may be. It follows that, not only is there no absolute standpoint from which the world can be comprehended as a whole, there also can be no such thing as an all-encompassing totality or unity of the world. For metaphysical perspectivists, there is considerable truth in claiming that there are as many worlds as there are perspectives. At the very least, such thinkers will insist that "the world"—if we wish to retain that convenient locution—exhibits pervasive, ever-evolving disunity as well as unity in its perspectival character.