Perspectivism: Its Promise and Vicissitudes

This essay articulates an ontological perspectivism for a relational world, drawing comparatively upon Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Mannheim, Alfred North Whitehead, Viveiros de Castro and Carl Rovelli to do so. Whitehead, contesting Einstein’s extrapolation of determinism from gravitational processes to all being, provides a rich vocabulary through which to articulate a more pervasive perspectival ontology in a universe replete with diverse pulses of creativity. But, by comparison to Nietzsche, Whitehead’s intimations of an immanent god and powerful tendencies toward cosmic harmonisation over time may fail to come to terms adequately with recurrent periods of planetary turbulence. Viveiros de Castro enriches this theme immensely by exploring the role of ‘disjunctive syntheses’ in Amazonian philosophies of life and by showing western philosophy how much it can learn from Amazonian shamans. But he may not explore, because it does not apply to his anthropology, the issues the multi-perspectivism he embraces pose to and within western studies of large, nonliving processes. Rovelli, a quantum theorist, radicalises perspectivism, carrying it into both living and nonliving processes. Rovelli does not, however, appreciate sufficiently differential modes of responsiveness, resistances and reserves among divergent living and nonliving forces. And, by comparison particularly to Whitehead and de Castro, he does not explore how a creative nexus between two divergent perspectives might occur. By considering each of these protean thinkers in relation to the others, it is hoped both that the problems in perspectivism are highlighted and that a more vibrant, though contestable, version begins to unfold.