Perspective is Primary

One of the most disputed but enduring ideas to come to us from ancient Greece is the proclamation by the first and foremost of the Sophists, Protagoras of Abdera, who declared “man is the measure of all things.” What Protagoras precisely intended by this statement is, of course, debated, but to claim that Protagoras was declaring for a relativist condition on knowledge is not very controversial. As Plato has Socrates propose in Theaetetus (152a), Protagoras was acknowledging that “as each thing appears to me, so it is for me, and as it appears to you, so it is for you.” That is, we obtain information about the world from our senses, but human beings are not uniform in their sensory responses and interpretations, and consequently, for example, a blowing wind will feel chill to one individual but not so to another individual standing by her side. Even the same individual, depending on her particular age at the time, or her mood, or the setting, and even her immediately-preceding experiences, will interpret the same sensory signals differently, according to these and many other factors.  
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The Sophists have suffered under a rather disreputable image for millennia, for they were professional teachers expecting remuneration for their instructional services, not as uncontroversial a practice as it is today, but more significantly, the sophists were criticized for providing instruction not on how to arrive at truth but how to prevail in an argument, irrespective of what side one took in an argument. As the literary critic/philosopher/novelist/professor George Steiner writes, the name sophist has been “pejorative throughout history,” for the name connotes “mendacious argument, the ability to take either side of a case with equal and factitious rhetorical brio, logical virtuosity without substance or moral reference” (Lessons of the Masters, pg. 12).

Truth, then, was not the primary concern of the sophists, and this devaluation of truth was the essence of what irked Plato, for he charged the sophists with possessing only a pretense to knowledge, and therefore the sophist profiting by appearing to offer something of great value, worthy of charging a fee to obtain, when in truth they were “a kind of cheat who imitates real things” (Sophist, 235b). Though sophist from the Greek sophistes originally meant one who is wise or one who is an expert, from Plato’s writings the term sophistry is now understood as denoting an instance of offering fallacious arguments, as employing reasoning that appears sound but in truth is unsupported and is intended to mislead. The Sophists, however, and their methods are experiencing a reappreciation, as the benefit of instruction on, and competence in, being able to argue both sides of a question is increasingly evident.

Protagoras has been charged with relativism, the doctrine that truth is “relative to the standpoint of the judging subject” (The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy). The belief that there are no objective standards for judgment, that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ is prevalent in our current age, but this belief is a perennial temptation, and many agree with Hamlet that “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Act II, Scene 2). The flaw with relativism is that it is a vacuous viewpoint, as it nullifies any search for truth, for why bother to search for truth if in fact there is no truth? If each judging subject has an equally valid claim for the truth of his or her judgment, then there is no truth. Truth requires discrimination from falsity.
The philosopher whose views have most thoroughly shaped modern thinking on whether truth is a fixed star, an invariant essence for all beings for all times, or whether truth varies according to viewpoint, is Friedrich Nietzsche. His thoughts on truth and its questionable fixity are classified as perspectivism, with these views being well illuminated in this passage from his The Dawn of Day, wherein Nietzsche asks us to consider our response were we to perceive someone laughing at us as we passed along a public street:

       “In accordance with whatever craving has reached its culminating point within us at 
        that moment, this incident will have this or that signification for us; and it will be a    
        very different occurrence in accordance with the class of men to which we belong.             
        One man will take it like a drop of rain, another will shake it off like a fly, a third    
        person will try to pick a quarrel on account of it, a fourth will examine his garments
        to see if there is anything about the likely to cause laughter, and a fifth will in       
        consequence think about what is ridiculous per se, a sixth will be pleased at having   
        involuntarily contributed to add a ray of sunshine and mirth to the world”

Nietzsche persuasively is demonstrating that our perspective on any particular incident will determine in what manner we interpret that incident. We can react with anger, with thoughtfulness, or with benevolence.
The doctrine of relativism can be understood as one means of attempting to account for the fact that our viewpoints often differ due to such influences as our social environment, our economic standing, varying cultural influences, our psychological makeup, and even our inconstant sensory capacities. Hence, per relativism, ‘truth’ is a matter of interpretation, and therefore Nietzsche’s perspectivism is relativism to the extent that both understand truth as an interpretation from a particular viewpoint, and as Professor John C. Solomon writes, “Perspectivism is the view that every “truth” is an interpretation from some particular perspective. There is no neutral, all-comprehending, “God’s-eye” view available (even for God). There are only perspectives” (What Nietzsche Realty Said, pg. 108).

Yet Nietzsche’s perspectivism is not wholly synonymous with relativism, for if we embrace fully the relativist stance, and hold that no claim for truth can be privileged over any other truth claim, then in effect we abandon the search for truth, and this surrender is not embraced by most individuals, and certainly not philosophers. Yes, Nietzsche stated in Human, All Too Human that “there are no eternal facts, nor are there any absolute truths,” but this view did not dissuade Nietzsche from a vigorous pursuit of truth, as he advocated strongly for “rigorous reflection” in all matters of significance. What, then, should we take from Nietzsche’s perspectivism? Nietzsche calls us away from an indolent acceptance of dogmatism, calling us to awaken our critical faculties and think for ourselves, irrespective of how contrary to received opinion the results of that thinking. If we do so, if we accept that what knowledge we have and what knowledge we may gain are ever perspectival, and we thus endeavor to understand how knowledge is influenced by perspective, then we acquire a more nuanced apprehension of the world and of the human condition.
We can accommodate relativism in our thinking, without adopting a cynical, easy view that there is no truth, and that one opinion or one viewpoint is just as valid and just as worthy as any other. Nietzsche most certainly distained such shallow thinking, even though he declared that every standpoint depends upon the perspective in which it originates. We can accept that our knowledge often is provisional, and may change as we acquire new knowledge, or a new perspective. An appreciation of Nietzsche’s perspectivism should dissuade us from an unrefined relativism that can readily envelope us in a quicksand of cynicism. Accepting that our point of view is perspectival need not persuade us that every point of view is of equal validity, nor deter us from engaging in a rigorous pursuit of truth.