Genealogical Perspectivism

Abstract

The fourth Nietzschean Leitmotif of Foucault’s genealogical research, i.e. perspectivism, is important and complex enough to be best treated in a separate chapter. Admittedly, perspectivism is a rather vague notion. Even in the case of Nietzsche himself, interpreters use this concept in different ways. While they agree that for Nietzsche all knowledge is relative to perspectives, interpreters disagree over the implications of this view. According to some Nietzsche scholars, his perspectivism does not rule out the possibility of speaking meaningfully of truth and of evaluating different perspectives in some non-arbitrary fashion (Nehamas 1985: 64-73). Others hold that Nietzsche rules out this possibility: for them, perspectivism amounts to the doctrine that since everything is relative to perspectives, we should not even use the concepts of truth and falsehood (MacIntyre 1988: 352).