EPISTEMIC PERSPECTIVISM AND LIVING WELL IN THE THOUGHT OF NIETZSCHE AND ZHUANGZI (original) (raw)

Epitemic Perspectivism and Living Well in the Thought of Nietzsche and Zhuangzi

2016

Nietzsche and Zhuangzi offer epistemological views of perspectivism that inform a normative conception of living well. Perspectivism for both thinkers point to the limits of human knowledge, in that both thinkers deny the possibility of attaining knowledge traditionally considered important to living well. Both also endorse a notion of the good life that takes the value of knowledge to be restricted. Nietzschean perspectivism devalues the pursuit of knowledge that does not pertain to human interests. Zhuangist perspectivism devalues the pursuit of knowledge that does not facilitate attainment of the normative Way. I respond to Berry’s therapeutic reading of Nietzsche in order to argue that Nietzsche rejects knowledge that does not speak to human interests. I also draw upon Ivanhoe and Berkson’s reading of Zhuangzi’s epistemology to argue that his perspectivism informs a view of the good life that values intuitive knowledge and its employment of the natural mechanism (tian ji), over ...

Perspectivism as a Way of Knowing in the Zhuangzi

A perspectivist theory is usually taken to mean that (1) our knowledge of the world is inevitably shaped by our particular perspectives, (2) any one of these perspectives is as good as any other, and (3) any claims to objective or authoritative knowledge are consequently without ground. Recent scholarship on Nietzsche, however, has challenged the prevalent view that the philosopher holds and , arguing instead that his perspectivism aims at attaining a greater level of objectivity. In this essay, I attempt a structurally similar reinterpretation of Zhuangzi's perspectivism. I argue that while the Chinese thinker sees all knowledge as perspective-dependent, he thinks that some perspectives are broader and more accurate than others. He utilizes shifts in perspective precisely in order to attain these superior perspectives, which constitute what he calls da zhi 大知, or "greater knowledge." Whereas Nietzsche sees his perspectivism as methodologically continuous with the sciences, Zhuangzi's "greater knowledge" has the goal of ensuring our survival and well-being in the everyday world.

Zhuangzi’s epistemic perspectivism: humility and open-mindedness as corrective virtues

Asian Journal of Philosophy

In Zhuangzi's philosophy, the intellectual virtues of humility and open-mindedness are best understood in the context of his epistemic perspectivism. The method, which urges knowers to pursue various and diverse points of view and incorporate them into a broad perspective, is justified by a second-order realization that all perspectives are partial and limited. This in turn urges a meta-virtue of humility, defined as a disposition in which knowers become aware of their epistemic limitations. Humility, consequently, encourages the virtue of open-mindedness, defined as the willingness and ability to surpass existing personal perspectives. Zhuangzi endorses the method and its attendant virtues to achieve what he calls great knowing. I propose that we gain a clearer sense of the role of humility and open-mindedness by also considering Zhuangzi's treatment of the vices, which are addressed with as much frequency as the virtues. Zhuangzi's treatment of arrogance and closed-mindedness reveals how humility and open-mindedness operate as corrective virtues, in the sense that they compensate for evident and familiar deficiencies in the epistemic practices of knowers in Zhuangzi's time. Humility and open-mindedness enable knowers to acquire new points of view that reliably produce knowledge.

Philosophy and the Good Life in the Zhuangzi

Metaphilosophy, 2020

The ancient Chinese text, the Zhuangzi, raises a mix of epistemological, psychological and conceptual challenges against the value and usefulness of philosophical disputation. But instead of advocating the elimination of philosophy, it implicitly embraces a broader conception of philosophy, the goal of which is to engage us to reflect on our limitations, question things we take for granted, and better appreciate alternative perspectives and possibilities. Philosophy thus understood is compatible with a variety of methods and approaches: fictions, jokes, paradoxes, spiritual exercises, argument, disputation, and so on. Philosophical practices, on this view, also pave the way for an open-minded, adaptive and flexible way of living that is at the core of the Zhuangist good life.

Perspectivism Narrow and Wide: An Examination of Nietzsche's Limited Perspectivism from a Daoist Lens

Kritike, 2013

Western liberal intellectuals often find themselves in a precarious situation with regard to whether or not they should celebrate and endorse Friedrich Nietzsche as a philosopher who we should all unequivocally embrace into our Western philosophical canon. While his critique of the Western philosophical tradition and his own creative insights are unprecedented and immensely important, his blatant inegalitarianism and remarks against women are often too difficult to stomach. This paper attempts to introduce Western philosophers to Chuang Tzu, a Chinese thinker who shares much of Nietzsche's style and philosophy, but also espouses a thoroughgoing egalitarianism. It does so by comparing Nietzsche and Chuang Tzu in regard to their methods, style, and philosophical beliefs, with a particular emphasis on the naturalism and perspectivism found in each thinker's philosophy. The hope is to provide Western liberal-minded intellectuals interested in Nietzsche and in equality with another perspective to bolster their thinking.

Nietzsche's Theory of Cognition: An Interpretation and Defense of Perspectivism

Friedrich Nietzsche has long been recognized as a pivotal thinker in the history of moral philosophy, but until the last quarter century his importance for our understanding of the concepts of truth and knowledge had been largely ignored in English-language scholarship. In my dissertation, I add to the growing discussion on Nietzsche’s theory of human cognition. While more attention has recently been given to this dimension of Nietzsche’s thought, several key aspects have been largely ignored or insufficiently treated including the effects that the ethical or evaluative domain have on the way we cognize the world, the role that radical skepticism plays in motivating Nietzsche’s theory, and the connections between Nietzsche’s views on cognition and his larger philosophical project. What is distinctive about my project is the connection I draw between Nietzsche’s critique of the unconditional will to truth in On the Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil and his treatments of epistemological issues. Without understanding this connection, one cannot understand how Nietzsche’s distinctive positions on truth, knowledge, and cognition relate his overall project. My dissertation sets out to answer four main questions regarding Nietzsche’s theory of cognition, each question corresponding to a chapter of the completed work. In Chapter One I ask what the relationship is between Nietzsche’s views on truth, knowledge, and cognition and his larger philosophical project of overcoming nihilism. Here I argue that Nietzsche’s views on cognition follow directly from his analysis of the nihilism of post-Christian Europe and that his project of overcoming that nihilism requires a complete revaluation of human knowing. Chapter Two asks what Nietzsche’s viii relationship is with skepticism and to what extent can Nietzsche be labeled a skeptic. I show that Nietzsche can be squarely placed in the skeptical tradition in philosophy that includes the Ancient Greek skeptics and the modern heuristic skeptic, Descartes. Nietzsche, however, rejects Descartes attempts to escape radical skepticism, and so can be properly labeled a radical skeptic himself. The next chapter asks what Nietzsche’s model is for how human cognition functions given that it is not designed to aim for truth (as it is traditionally understood, i.e. correspondence). I explore the ways that his favored metaphors of textual interpretation and optical perspective function in elucidating what goes on when we think, highlighting these metaphors strengths and weaknesses. I ultimately conclude that cognition is a practical endeavor with theoretical objects, leading Nietzsche to reject the Kantian distinction between the practical and theoretical employments of reason. Finally I ask, given Nietzsche’s model of how human cognition functions, how should we evaluate competing knowledge claims between individuals? It has been argued that Nietzsche’s pespectivism leads to an unacceptable global relativism regarding, if not truth, then at least epistemic justification. I argue that Nietzsche does not need to abandon the most radical of his conclusions, and he can still account for how and why some positions on theoretical and philosophical matters are better than others, and so an unacceptable “anything goes” kind of relativism does not follow from his views. After answering these four main questions regarding Nietzsche’s views on truth, knowledge, and cognition, I look at how a metaphysics is possible for Nietzsche given his skepticism. I argue that one of the ways a philosopher can create the conditions for overcoming nihilism and affirming life is to create a metaphysics that is both ruthlessly honest to one’s cognitive commitments and an artistically creative outpouring of one’s abundant, healthy drives. I show in this final chapter how a metaphysics that is self-aware of its epistemic limitations fits into some of the contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche’s positive project.

Nietzsche’s Epistemic Perspectivism

Knowledge from a Human Point of View, 2019

Nietzsche offers a positive epistemology, and those who interpret him as a skeptic or a mere pragmatist are mistaken. Instead he supports what he calls perspectivism. This is a familiar take on Nietzsche, as perspectivism has been analyzed by many previous interpreters. The present paper presents a sketch of the textually best supported and logically most consistent treatment of perspectivism as a firstorder epistemic theory. What's original in the present paper is an argument that Nietzsche also offers a second-order methodological perspectivism aimed at enhancing understanding, an epistemic state distinct from knowledge. Just as Descartes considers and rejects radical skepticism while at the same time adopting methodological skepticism, one could consistently reject perspectivism as a theory of knowledge while accepting it as contributing to our understanding. It is argued that Nietzsche's perspectivism is in fact two-tiered: knowledge is perspectival because truth itself is, and in addition there is a methodological perspectivism in which distinct ways of knowing are utilized to produce understanding. A review of the manner in which understanding is conceptualized in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science serves to illuminate how Nietzsche was tackling these ideas. Keywords Nietzsche • Perspectivism • Understanding • Knowledge an argument that Nietzsche also offers a second-order methodological perspectivism aimed at enhancing understanding, an epistemic state distinct from knowledge. One could consistently reject perspectivism as a theory of knowledge while accepting it as contributing to our understanding. In fact, I believe he accepts both. One thing Nietzsche loves is the hyperbolic smackdown followed by (partly) walking it back. He uses this tactic on practically every topic he touches. In Beyond Good and Evil (BGE 108) and Twilight of the Idols (TI VII:1) Nietzsche declares that there are no moral facts whatsoever and then goes on to enunciate formulas for greatness and recipes for virtue (Ecce Homo II:10; AC 11). 1 He denounces philosophers' obsession with the will (BGE 19) and then promotes the will to power. Nietzsche's audacious decrees are usually meant to shock the reader out of a complacent conformity to traditional dogmas. By artificially turning up the contrast, he casts rival ideas into high relief and highlights the alternative ideas that he is proposing. Nietzsche is fond of dismantling philosophical structures, taking their components and re-using them in new ways. He says as much in Assorted Opinions and Maxims (AOM 201): "The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the building: posterity discovers it in the bricks with which he built and which are then often used again for better building: in the fact, that is to say, that that building can be destroyed and nonetheless possess value as material." Of course, Nietzsche's own positive views are famously hard to pin down, since he approaches "deep problems like cold baths: quickly into them and quickly out again" (The Gay Science 381). The matter of his epistemic perspectivism is no exception, as he touches on it, moves on, and then returns to it many pages or even books later.

Knowing Limits: Toward a Versatile Perspectivism with Nietzsche, Heidegger, Zhuangzi and Zen

This essay is about "knowing limits," both in the sense of acknowledging the inevitable perspectival limits of our knowledge, and in the sense in which the act of knowing delimits the parameters of that which is known. Moreover, it aims to cultivate a versatile perspectivism that is ethically oriented by a capacity for ecstatic empathy rather than an egocentric will to power. The essay begins with an examination of the mind/body problem as a paradigmatic case of perspectival ambiguity, making reference to a wide range of authors. The focus of the central sections of the essay is on Nietzsche and Heidegger, while the final sections are devoted to developing a phenomenological reading of Zhuangzi and Zen. At issue throughout is the articulation of a versatile perspectivism responsive to both the demarcative and disclosive senses of knowing limits.

Nietzsche\u27s Theory of Cognition: An Interpretation and Defense of Perspectivism

2012

Nietzsche's Pragmatism. A Study on Perspectival Thought

De Gruyter, Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung, vol. 72, 2019

During his late period, Nietzsche is particularly concerned with the value that mankind attributes to truth. In dealing with that topic, Nietzsche is not primarly interested in the metaphysical disputes on truth, but rather in the effects that the "will to truth" has on the human being. In fact, he argues that the "faith in a value as such of truth" influenced Western culture and started the anthropological degeneration of the human type that characterizes European morality. To call into question the value of truth is therefore necessary, if one wants to help mankind to find her way in the labyrinth of nihilism. In this new addition to Nietzsche scholarship, Gori explores the origin and aim of the philosopher's late perspectival thought by merging the theoretical with the historical approach, with a special focus on the epistemological debate that influenced Nietzsche. As a result, the book provides a contextual reading of the issue that supports the idea that Nietzsche’s attitude in addressing the problem of truth is, in a broad sense, pragmatic.

EPISTEMIC PERSPECTIVISM AND LIVING WELL IN THE THOUGHT OF NIETZSCHE AND ZHUANGZI (original) (raw)

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