Day 30 — Pragmatism and Perspectivism
Here’s a couple more theories of thought that can help unpack our topic of knowledge.
Firstly, C.S Pierce was a famous American philosopher who introduced the idea of pragmatism with a paper called “How to make our ideas clear” in 1878. He believed that the links between thought and action were very important, that we can achieve clarity of thought through figuring out the consequences of our ideas — while there may be abstract ideas and concepts, they still have value, but pragmatism aims to be more practical in its outlook.
While it was C.S Pierce proposed the idea of pragmatism, it was William James’ book Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking that suggested that clearness in our thoughts about an object required consideration of what practical effects that the object might involve. He rejected the idea of objective truth, and that an idea is true if it works. While he deviated from Pierce’s philosophy (to the point that Pierce suggested that James’ ideas be called pragmaticism!), he did suggest that ‘true ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify’.
German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the more difficult philosophers to study, and his theory of perspectivism is a challenge in itself! While the influence of his thought reality do raise some questions about world views, we can see how it is reflected in postmodern and modern feminist philosophy.
For Nietzsche, reality is chaotic, and requires categorisations, as there ‘are no facts, only interpretations’ He believed that all human beings have this need to service, grow and to use their powers, and this ‘will to power’ influences our perspective on reality. We are influenced by what ‘lenses’ we use to navigate the world, whether they are our needs, values and so on, that is also different according to different people and their backgrounds.
Further Resources:
Nietzsche’s Perspectivism (pdf)
