Perspective and Reality: Embracing Diverse Viewpoints for Truth
Perspective and Reality
From different points of view, two men see the same landscape. However, it appears different to each. The foreground is charged with details for one, while for the other, it is distant, dark, and blurry. Moreover, as things placed one after the other are hidden in whole or in part, each will receive portions of the landscape that the other cannot. Would it make sense to declare either landscape false? Obviously not, as each is as real as the other. But neither would it make sense to dismiss their differing views as illusory. This would imply a third, authentic landscape, not subject to the same conditions. However, such an archetype cannot exist. Cosmic reality can only be seen under a certain perspective. Perspective is a component of reality, its organization, not a deformation. A reality viewed identically from any point is absurd.
What applies to corporeal vision also applies to all other aspects of knowledge. All knowledge is from a point of view. Spinoza’s species aeternitatis, the ubiquitous, absolute view, did not exist; it is a fictional, abstract perspective. While useful for instrumental knowledge, it is not real. The abstract point of view only provides abstractions.
This thinking leads to a radical overhaul of philosophy and, most importantly, our cosmic feeling.
Subject and Individuality
The individuality of each subject was a nuisance to the intellectual tradition that sought absolute truth. It was believed that different subjects reach divergent truths. Now we see that divergence between individual worlds does not imply falsity. On the contrary, because what one sees is reality, not fiction, its appearance must differ. This divergence is complementary, not contradictory. If the universe presented an identical face to a Socratic Greek and a 20th-century Yankee, we should conclude it lacked true reality, independent of subjects. Such a match would indicate not an external reality, but a coincidental imagination.
Every life is a view of the universe. What one sees, another cannot. Every individual, person, people, and time is indispensable for conquering truth. Truth, alien to historical variations, becomes a critical dimension through life’s development, change, and adventure.
Vista and Vital Reason
Rationalism as Utopia
The error was assuming reality had its own physiognomy, regardless of viewpoint. Thus, any vision from a specific point would be false, not coinciding with the whole. But reality, like a landscape, has infinite, equally true perspectives. The misconception is seeking a single, unique perspective. Utopia is false; truth is not localized in “no-place.” Rationalism, as a form of utopianism, is wrong because it abandons the individual’s true viewpoint.
Philosophy has always been utopian, aiming to apply to all times and people. Exempt from the critical, historical, perspective dimension, it made a vain, final gesture. The doctrine of viewpoint requires articulating the vital perspective within the system, allowing interaction with other systems. Pure reason must be replaced by vital reason, gaining mobility and transformative power.
Critique of Past Philosophies
Primitivism in Philosophy
Looking at past philosophies, including those of the last century, we see traits of primitivism, as in Quattrocento painters. Their primitiveness lies in their naivete and self-forgetfulness. The primitive painter depicts the world from their viewpoint, under private ideas and feelings, but believes they paint it “as it is.” They forget their personality, presenting the work as if made by the universe itself, a fixed point in space and time. We see their individuality, but they, unaware of themselves, thought they were pupils of the universe.
The complacency of innocence involves rejecting the innocent, a benevolent contempt. We enjoy primitive painters and children because we feel superior. Our worldview is wider, more complex. Their world seems a small, controllable circle. Contemplating it temporarily frees us from our troubled existence. Grace’s innocence delights the strong in the weak’s weakness.
Past philosophies appeal similarly. Their clear, simple schematics, the naive illusion of discovered truth, and the certainty of formulas give the impression of a solved world without problems. Walking in such clear, tame worlds is pleasing.
World and Horizon
Converting World to Horizon
But when we turn to ourselves and feel the universe with our own sensibility, we see that those philosophies defined not the world, but their authors’ horizon. What they interpreted as the universe’s limit was merely the curved line closing their perspective. To cure primitivism and utopia, we must correct this, expanding horizons rather than stagnating.
Reducing the world to a horizon does not diminish reality; it connects it to the living subject, providing a vital dimension, locating it in the stream of life, from village to village, generation to generation, individual to individual, encompassing universal reality.
Thus, each being’s uniqueness, its universal difference, far from hindering truth, is the body that sees its deserved portion of reality. Every individual, generation, and time is an irreplaceable instrument of knowledge. Full truth comes from articulating what each sees. Each individual is an essential perspective.
God as the Sum of All Viewpoints
Juxtaposing all partial views achieves embracing, absolute truth. This sum of individual perspectives, this omniscience, is absolutely true, the sublime office we attribute to God. God is a viewpoint, not because of an external lookout, like an old rationalist. God is not rational. His view is each of us; our partial truth is also true for God. Thus, our perspective is true and authentic! God, as the catechism says, is everywhere, enjoying all viewpoints, collecting and harmonizing all horizons in boundless vitality. God is the vital symbol of the stream, through which the universe passes, steeped in life, seen, loved, hated, suffered, and enjoyed.
Malebranche argued that we know truth by seeing things in God, from God’s viewpoint. I believe the reverse: God sees things through humans, who are divinity’s visual organs.
We should embrace our place, with deep loyalty to our organization, open our eyes to the outline, and accept the task of our time.