Knowledge from a Human Point of View

Front matter

Synthese Library 416 Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science

Ana-Maria Cretu Michela Massimi Editors

Knowledge froma Human Point of View

Introduction

This edited collection of nine original essays was commissioned as part of the ERC Consolidator Grant project Perspectival realism. Science, Knowledge, and Truth from a Human Vantage Point. The guiding idea behind it is to explore the view known as “perspectivism” in philosophy of science by looking at its broader historical and epistemological context. Perspectivism in philosophy of science is often presented as a view about our scientific knowledge being historically and culturally situated. The scientific knowledge we can afford is inevitably the outcome of modelling practices, scientific theories, experimental techniques, conceptual resources inherent in specific ‘scientific perspectives’ that we—as historically situated epistemic agents—happen to occupy. Therefore, it is common currency to refer to the “Newtonian perspective’, or the ‘Maxwellian perspective’ (among innumerable others across the sciences) as a way of marking and specifying the particular vantage point from which knowledge claims are typically made. But what is philosophically at stake in this seemingly platitudinous move remains to be clarified. For one, if our scientific knowledge is indeed historically and culturally situated, can it ever be knowledge of the world as is (as opposed to knowledge of the world as seen through our perspectival lenses)? Relatedly, how does perspectivism affect the very notion of knowledge (qua justified true belief, under the traditional view) if justification and truth are themselves couched as perspectival notions?

This edited collection locates perspectivism within the wider landscape of history of Western philosophy and current epistemology. Two overarching questions guide the inquiry in the following chapters. When did the idea of knowledge from a human point of view emerge in the history of philosophy? And what role does the idea play in contemporary debates in epistemology? Each question invites more than one answer and the selection of chapters that follow is intended to give a brief—almost pointillistic, but nevertheless illuminating—introduction, rather than a comprehensive and exhaustive treatment of the topic. In what follows, we briefly introduce each chapter and the underlying narrative and leitmotiv that connects the first part of the book (with more historical analyses) to the second part (dedicated to ramifications in contemporary epistemology).

Situating perspectivism in the history of Western philosophy means locating a x Introduction distinctive notion of ‘knowledge from a human point of view’ as an emerging influential trend with far-reaching ramifications in contemporary epistemology.! When did the epistemic agent’s point of view become relevant in philosophical discussions about knowledge? The question might sound prima facie trivial (of course, knowledge is necessarily from a human point of view—whose else’s point of view could it be?). But, in fact, it conceals a more profound issue. It has become a platitude (almost a cliché) to identify Kant in the history of Western philosophy as a turning point in placing the epistemic agent’s point of view centre stage. After all, was not Kant the philosopher who with his self-styled ‘Copernican revolution’ re-aligned philosophy around the human agents (as Copernicus re-aligned planetary motion around the Sun)? Was not Kant the philosopher who clearly warned against the sceptical threat facing anyone who asks how our representation of things conform to these things as they are in themselves? (see Kant 1781/1787, Bxx).

But while Kant certainly placed the human agent centre stage, he did not give precise instructions as to how to ‘exit’ one’s own perspective. How is it possible to identify one’s mode of knowledge as a particular perspective if one cannot exit it and encounter others who occupy different perspectives? How could one recognise one’s own standpoint as such without a plurality of other possible standpoints? This is the central question that Rachel Zuckert addresses in Chap. 1. Zuckert argues that there is an inevitable tension inherent in the very idea of knowledge from a human point of view. Kant maintains that one can only gain knowledge of the world from within the human perspective. Yet the recognition of this fact requires one to be able to step outside the human perspective and to acknowledge the existence of other perspectives, which Kant seems to deny. Zuckert defends Kant’s view from potential incoherency charges by examining Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic in the Critique of Pure Reason. Zuckert argues that reason with its ideas delivers a conception of a thing that cannot be presented in experience. Attempts to exit the human perspective, and failures to do so (as Kant explored them in the Transcendental Dialectic), can lead one to recognise the specificity and the limitations of the human perspective, without ever being able to step outside it.

But maybe more than Kant himself, the Western philosopher who has more clearly advocated a view known as perspectivism is Friedrich Nietzsche. In Chap. 2, Steven D. Hales explores Nietzsche’s two-tier perspectivism as encompassing a first-order epistemic theory that takes truth as perspectival and a second-order methodological perspectivism aimed at enhancing ‘understanding’. Hales defends Nietzsche’ ‘positive epistemology’ by responding to both critics who perceive Nietzsche as a sceptic and those who have interpreted him as a pragmatist. He surveys contemporary epistemological accounts concerned with the notion of ‘under-

'The qualification of Western philosophy is important here because our already very selective introduction to the topic will be confined to the three main figures of Kant, Nietzsche, and American Pragmatism (with no implication or suggestion that similar themes cannot be found in other Western authors, of course). A more comprehensive analysis would also need to include Arabic, Indian, and Chinese philosophy (among others) where the notion of knowledge from a human point of view might be cast in an interestingly new light. This would be an extensive scholarly project to undertake on some another occasion, we hope.

Introduction xi standing’ to motivate Nietzsche’s methodological perspectivism and points out that the adoption of different perspectives, including erroneous ones, can further ‘understanding’.

The perspectivalist line of inquiry that begins with Kant and continues with Nietzsche finds its mature expression in the multifaceted reflections of the movement known as American Pragmatism. Matthew Brown in Chap. 3 highlights how the notion of knowledge from a human point of view acquires wider resonance in the work of the American Pragmatists. Starting with the Pragmatist notions of inquiry and truth and potential lessons for perspectivists, Brown carves a path through a voluminous literature and analyses pluralistic metaphysics in the pragmatist tradition. His inquiry reveals certain shortcomings for perspectivism, such as a potential collapse into relativism, or a narrow Eurocentric focus in science. Brown suggests that these shortcomings can be overcome if perspectivists are willing to integrate certain lessons on truth, reality, and plurality from the American pragmatists. For example, the perspectivist can avail herself of Pierce’s dynamic idea of community of inquiry to forgo the static and passive vision metaphor. Or learn from Addams’ and Du Bois’s standpoint theory to integrate a wider range of perspectives in science.

Unsurprisingly, American Pragmatism played a key role in informing one of the most influential contemporary advocates of a view closely related to perspectivism: Hilary Putnam’s internal realism (or, as he later rebranded it ‘realism with a human face’). In Chap. 4, Mario De Caro discusses Putnam’s philosophical thoughts on reality and knowledge, and in particular his evolving views on what form of realism might be tenable. De Caro starts his survey with Putnam’s views on physicalism and his criticism of metaphysical realism. He then turns to Putnam’s internal realism, which, according to De Caro, was in part inspired by Kant, Peirce, and Dummett, and motivated by a renewed effort to respond to metaphysical realism. Putnam eventually abandoned internal realism in favour of ‘liberal naturalism’, a view that De Caro sees as congenial to Massimi’s own version of perspectival realism.

These first four chapters set the historical stage for the second part of the book where the discussion switches to the ramifications of perspectivism in contemporary epistemology. What is it at stake in the seemingly anodyne claim that knowledge is ‘from a human point of view’? In Chap. 5, Natalie Ashton looks at the topic through the lenses of contemporary feminist standpoint theory. She argues that both perspectivism and feminist standpoint theory have a lot to learn from relativism, as well as from one another. Ashton identifies elements of relativism at play in Ron Giere’s perspectivism and in standpoint theory, respectively, and argues that there is an innocuous version of relativism that can benefit both views. One mistake that both Giere’s perspectivism and feminist standpoint theories make, in Ashton’s view, is to interpret relativism as asserting equal validity. The latter maintains that all rankings of different perspectives are equally correct, when in fact both views share with relativism the idea of non-neutrality, i.e. system-independent rankings are not possible. Ashton believes that once perspectivism and feminist standpoint theory embrace some version of non-silly relativism, both views will be better equipped to occupy the feasible middle-ground they are striving for.

xii Introduction

In Chap. 6, Kareem Khalifa and Jared Millson put forward a view which they call “inquisitive-truth monism’, according to which it is not only true beliefs that are of epistemic value, but true answers to relevant questions. According to Khalifa and Millson, it is an inquirer’s perspective that determines what questions are relevant, where the inquirer’s perspective encompasses their interests, social role, and background assumptions. Khalifa and Millson’s main motivation in pursuing inquisitive-truth monism is—in their own words—to account for ‘the complexity of epistemically valuable undertakings characterizing the scientific endeavor’. They argue that traditional accounts, which focus on the acquisition of true beliefs, are inadequate to capture such complexity. They nod to perspectivism as a way of cashing out an alternative notion of epistemic normativity centred on the epistemic agent’s perspectival interests. Along similar lines, Nick Treanor, in Chap. 7, undertakes an examination of epistemic normativity that takes perspectivism seriously. Treanor starts with a discussion of a widespread view about epistemic normativity that takes truth as a key norm for beliefs. On this view, shared by Alvin Goldman and Ernest Sosa among others, to know is to believe the truth—as much truth as is possible—and avoid error. Treanor highlights problems with this conception of epistemic normativity, focused as it is on more true and less false beliefs, and suggests a different way of thinking about epistemic normativity and a perspectival challenge looming in the horizon.

Sosa’s epistemological view is also the starting point for Adam Carter’s analysis in Chap. 8. Carter focuses on Sosa’s ‘virtue perspectivism’ as a two-tier epistemological stance, whereby the reliability of first-order animal knowledge requires an ascent to second-order reflective or perspectival knowledge. Despite its success at averting scepticism and regress, critics have however lamented that virtue perspectivism falls prey of circular strategies. Carter’s aim in this chapter is to tease out the criticisms and defend Sosa’s virtue perspectivism from circularity-based objections levelled at the view by Barry Stroud, Baron Reed, and Richard Fumerton.

Aptly, this edited collection concludes with Chap. 9 by Barry Stroud himself, who undertakes a conceptual analysis of the very notion of ‘knowledge from a human point of view’. By investigating the ways in which human beings come to know and what it means for one to come to know something, Stroud addresses the sceptical challenges to the possibility of knowledge and general concerns about knowledge and truth that a perspectival realist might have. He argues that to occupy a “human point of view” is to be fully engaged in the community of human knowers and to be committed to the world’s being the way it is widely known to be. However, he also warns that this way of thinking about the original question does not have anything distinctively perspectival. And that maybe a better way of understanding the notion of ‘knowledge from a human point of view’ is to reflect not directly on human knowledge as such, but on human beings, ‘their regarding themselves as enquirers or knowers’. Like Treanor, Stroud too invites ‘aspiring perspectivists’ to ask themselves questions about

what we primarily want to understand about the acquisition and development of what we call human knowledge. Is it human acceptance—and rejection—of more and more theories or hypotheses that we think needs accounting for? Or is it the fact of theory change, or the

Introduction xiii competition among theories: how can we tell which is best? Or is what we want to account for the progressive accumulation of more and more of what we call human knowledge. (Stroud, Chap 9)

These pressing questions remain ongoing concerns for aspiring perspectivists. Barry Stroud sadly and untimely passed away since writing this Chapter. We dedicate this volume to his memory, and hope this edited collection will prompt more and broader reflections on a fast-growing topic with a long-standing philosophical history.

Edinburgh, UK Ana-Maria Crețu October 2019 Michela Massimi

Contents

1 Attempting to Exit the Human Perspective: A Priori

Rachel Zuckert

Steven D. Hales

Chapter 2 A) Nietzsche’s Epistemic Perspectivism gest

Steven D. Hales

Abstract 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 first-order 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

In this paper I will argue that Nietzsche offers a positive epistemology, and that those who interpret him as a sceptic or a mere pragmatist are mistaken. Instead he supports what he calls perspectivism. So far this is not a new take on Nietzsche, as perspectivism has been analyzed by many previous interpreters. I present a sketch of what I think is textually best supported and logically most consistent treatment of perspectivism as a first-order epistemic theory. What is new in the present paper is

S. D. Hales (%4) Department of Philosophy, Bloomsburg University, Bloomsburg, PA, USA e-mail: hales @bloomu.edu

© The Author(s) 2020 19 A. Crețu, M. Massimi (eds.), Knowledge from a Human Point of View, Synthese Library 416, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27041-4_2 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).! 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.

! HATH = Human, All Too Human, ed. and trans. Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984; original edition: 1878).

AOM = Assorted Opinions and Maxims, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; original edition: 1879)

D = Daybreak, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982; original edition: 1881).

GS = The Gay Science, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974; original edition: 1882).

Z = Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking Penguin, 1954; original edition: 1885).

BGE = Beyond Good and Evil, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966; original edition: 1886).

GM = On the Genealogy of Morals, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967; original edition: 1887).

AC = The Antichrist, ed. and trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Viking Penguin, 1968; original edition: 1895).

TI = The Twilight of the Idols, ed. and trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Viking Penguin, 1968; original edition: 1889).

EH = Ecce Homo, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967; original edition: 1908).

WP = The Will to Power, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968).

Nietzsche’s blitzkrieg is not as successful a rhetorical strategy as he might have hoped. It is far too easy to latch onto some portion of his work and treat it as a synecdoche that represents the whole. The result is a secondary literature that contains only pockets of agreement and little satisfactory unification. Nietzsche worried a good bit about being misunderstood (GM III 1, AOM 137, EH preface 1), while also impishly admitting that “I obviously do everything to be ‘hard to understand’ myself!” (BGE 27). It’s hard to tell what sort of readers Nietzsche was hoping for, since he certainly had no optimism that philosophers were going to figure it all out. As he puts it in The Gay Science ($333), “Conscious thinking, especially that of the philosopher, is the least vigorous and therefore also the relatively mildest and calmest form of thinking; and thus precisely philosophers are most apt to be led astray about the nature of knowledge.”

2.2 The Skeptical and Pragmatic Interpretations

In practice, the result is that when Nietzsche writes things like “the biggest fable of all is the fable of knowledge” (The Will to Power 555); “delusion and error are conditions of human knowledge and sensation” (GS 107); “there are no eternal facts, nor are there any absolute truths” (Human, All Too Human 2), or when he repeatedly hammers against the sensibility of Kantian things-in-themselves that could be the objects of knowledge, as he does in the fourth chapter of Twilight of the Idols, many readers assume that he is an epistemological skeptic.

Babette Babich, for example, writes, “Nietzsche contends that knowledge — even as a limited perspective — is impossible” (Babich 1994, 80). R.J. Hollingdale concurs. He claims that according to Nietzsche, “[i]n the sense in which philosophers are accustomed to use the word ... there is no knowledge” (Hollingdale 1973, 131). Jean Granier also agrees that for Nietzsche “the traditional concept of knowledge appears as a pseudo-concept” (Granier 1977, 192). Alan Schrift thinks that Nietzsche rejects epistemology entirely as a result of his skepticism: “[he] does not provide a theory at all; it is a rhetorical strategy that offers an alternative to the traditional epistemological conception of knowledge as the possession of some stable, eternal ‘entities’, whether these be considered ‘truths’, ‘facts’, ‘meanings’, ‘propositions’, or whatever .... Nietzsche views these ‘entities’ as beyond the limits of human comprehension, and ... he concludes that we are surely incapable of ‘knowing’ them” (Schrift 1990, 145). Peter Poellner sees Nietzsche as part of a Cartesian skeptical tradition, where “even if we were able to rationally justify a thought ... we would have no good reason to regard it as true” (Poellner 1995, 63). Willard Mittelman sums up the skeptical interpretation: “for Nietzsche knowledge of the world is impossible” (Mittelman 1984, 8).

? As Socrates asked Theaetetus, “do you fancy it is a small matter to discover the nature of knowledge? Is it not one of the hardest questions?” Theaetetus 148.c.

Jessica Berry offers a subtle analysis of Nietzsche as belonging to the Pyrrhonian skeptical tradition, something quite distinct from the more common readings of him as a Cartesian skeptic. For ancient skeptics like Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus, the peace of mind they termed ataraxia was to be achieved through suspending judgment about everything that is less than self-evident. Arguments can be mounted for and against any propositions, making them uncertain and inconclusive, leaving the inquirer indefinitely indecisive and unsure what to believe. For the Pyrrhonian skeptic, that is the proper frame of mind. Berry holds that Nietzsche’s perspectivism is primarily epistemic — he recognizes a variety of perspectives as equipollent, which leads to the Pyrrhonian suspension of judgment and a rejection of dogmatic views that take one perspective as superior to another. Perspectivism as a doctrine or positive position of any kind would be just another sort of dogmatism on her reading (Berry 2011, chapter 4).

It is puzzling that those who regard Nietzsche as a skeptic not only skip over his criticisms of skepticism, but somehow miss the occasions when he walks his more extreme claims about knowledge back. In BGE 208 Nietzsche remarks that “when a philosopher suggests these days that he is not a skeptic ... everybody is annoyed”. Why are they annoyed? Is it because skepticism is so clearly right that only retrograde, dogmatic troglodytes still claim to have knowledge? No, skeptics are “‘delicate” and “timid”; they suffer from “nervous exhaustion” and “sickliness.” Skepticism, Nietzsche claims, is a fashionable decadence, a soporific sedative; “entertaining no hypotheses at all might well be part of good taste”. In other words, the rejection of skepticism is a social faux pas in fashionably effete circles, whereas the claim of knowledge — that is dangerous, an explosive rumbling in the distance. In the same section Nietzsche equates objective knowledge with dressed-up skepticism, which he regards as mere epistemic trendiness. But he is not dismissing knowledge; in the same breath that he denounces skepticism, Nietzsche rejects absolutism as a kindred crime. Skepticism and absolutism are opposite sides of the same devalued coin.

Nietzsche does not sentence knowledge — in some sense of the term — to the gallows. Consider that “no honey is sweeter than that of knowledge” (HATH 292) and his assertion that “whoever seriously wants to become free ... his will desires nothing more urgently than knowledge and the means to it — that is, the enduring condition in which he is best able to engage in knowledge” (HATH 288). He also connects knowledge with both pleasure and happiness: “Why is knowledge, the element of researchers and philosophers, linked to pleasure? First and foremost, because by it we gain awareness of our power ... Second, because, as we gain knowledge, we surpass older ideas and their representatives, become victors, or at least believe ourselves to be. Third, because any new knowledge, however small, makes us feel superior to everyone and unique in understanding this matter correctly” (HATH 252). Likewise, happiness is positively undesirable without knowledge: “our drive for knowledge has become too strong for us to be able to want happiness without knowledge ... Knowledge has in us been transformed into a passion which shrinks at no sacrifice and at bottom fears nothing but its own extinction” (Daybreak 429). Nor is the happiness provided by knowledge cheap or ephemeral: rather, “the happiness of the man of knowledge enhances the beauty of the world and makes all that exists sunnier; knowledge casts its beauty not only over things but in the long run into things ...” (D 550).

The quotations in the preceding paragraph are from Human, All Too Human and Daybreak, two of Nietzsche’s earlier works, and those enamored of the idea that Nietzsche’s thought progressed through distinct phases (like Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter) might be inclined to regard those passages as examples of an early, “positivistic” phase, rather than of his mature thinking. It is true that Nietzsche did change his mind about some topics. Richard Wagner is the most obvious, where the hagiography of The Birth of Tragedy gave way to the vitriol of Nietzsche Contra Wagner and The Case of Wagner. However, a close examination of Nietzsche’s writings from throughout his life demonstrates that he displays continuing respect for knowledge. Even in The Gay Science, the source of much of Nietzsche’s epistemological critique, he characterizes himself as a lover of knowledge (GS 14), a seeker of knowledge (GS 380), and as someone greedy for knowledge (GS 242, 249). The most famous announcement of The Gay Science, the death of God, is taken to be a welcome epistemic harbinger; now that God is dead, “all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never been such an ‘open sea’” (GS 343). Nietzsche is clear in The Gay Science ($324) that this is cause for rejoicing: “and knowledge itself ... for me it is a world of dangers and victories in which heroic feelings, too, find places to dance and play. ‘Life as a means to knowledge’ — with this principle in one’s heart one can live not only boldly but even gaily, and laugh gaily too.”

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra one finds Zarathustra saying “With knowledge the body purifies itself; making experiments with knowledge it elevates itself; in the lover of knowledge all instincts become holy; in the elevated, the soul becomes gay” (Z1:22.2). In the first section of the preface to On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche writes that the treasure for “we men of knowledge” is “where the beehives of knowledge are”. This sort of praise for knowledge continued to the end of his productive life. In The Antichrist (48, see also 49) he criticizes Christianity on the grounds that it Opposes science and knowledge, characterizing knowledge as “emancipation from the priest’; and in Ecce Homo (“The Birth of Tragedy”: 2) he writes, “Knowledge, saying Yes to reality, is just as necessary for the strong as cowardice and the flight from reality — as the ‘ideal’ is for the weak, who are inspired by weakness”.

So Nietzsche has some kind of positive attitude towards and program regarding knowledge and a program. But what is it? Beyond Good and Evil opens with him questioning the value of truth, and why its pursuit should be seen as the highest value. “Knowledge for its own sake” is a form of unexamined moralizing (BGE 63). Nietzsche often writes about the practicality of beliefs as a distinct virtue from their truth. Consider The Gay Science 354: “we simply lack any organ for knowledge, for ‘truth’: we ‘know’ (or believe or imagine) just as much as may be useful in the interests of the human herd, the species ...”. In the same passage, Nietzsche goes so far as to speculate about conditions in which we would be so severely mistaken about what is useful for us that it would cause human extinction. In The Will to Power (493)

he writes that “truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live”, and suggests in WP (515) that our goal is “not ‘to know’ but to schematize — to impose upon chaos as much regularity and form as our practical needs require”. In BGE 4 he writes, “the falseness of a judgment is for us not necessarily an objection ... the question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating”. We need to recognize untruth as a condition of life (BGE 4).

It is not surprising that these sorts of passages led some interpreters to conclude that Nietzsche was a pragmatist, where knowledge just consists in accepting those doctrines that are helpful or productive for our lives. Arthur Danto led the way, writing “Nietzsche ... advanced a pragmatic criterion of truth” (Danto 1965, 72), and he was followed by Reudiger Grimm, who writes, “the criterion to be met by any of these perspectival ‘errors’ [that Nietzsche discusses] is not one of veracity, but rather one of utility. In point of usefulness there is a great deal of difference between interpretations ...” (Grimm 1977, 70). More recently, Tsarina Doyle interprets Nietzsche as defending internal realism, a view that Hilary Putnam regarded as the heir to the American pragmatist tradition (Doyle 2009, chapter 2). Neil Sinhababu is even more explicit: “Nietzschean pragmatism is the view that one should believe whatever best promotes life, even things that are untrue ...” (Sinhababu 2017, 56).

2.3 Nietzsche’s First-Order Perspectivism

Nietzsche’s pragmatist interpreters have a case to be made, but like the skeptics’ reading, it is incomplete, as we will see. Probably the most popular analysis of his epistemology is that he defends perspectivism, a sort of relativism about truth and knowledge that has tendrils throughout his work. Perspectivism in contemporary philosophy of science has to do with human limitations and focused interest. For example, we see colors only along a very narrow band of electromagnetic radiation, which restricts our connection to the external world. In addition, our scientific theories often aim to model the world only at some interest-relative scale, as we see moving from atomic physics to chemistry to biology. Scientific perspectivism of this sort is arguably a realist theory. Nietzsche’s perspectivism is broader and less focused. For him, perspectivism is not one precisely defined doctrine, but a cluster of related ideas about the subjectivity of truth, anti-realist metaphysics, a bundle theory of objects, the revaluation of values and the creation of one’s own virtues, and the role of varying interpretations in knowledge (Hales and Welshon 2000). It is the latter that I will focus on here.