A GUA POTABLE

while some of them would have it that the whole world is spun out of this faculty of cognition.21

Central to the development of an historical sense, according to Nietzsche, is the realisation that our social institutions and values are not instantia- tions of a timeless and purely rational ‘ideal’ but rather are expressions of psychological and physiological conditions. He argues that psychol- ogy provides the key to understanding the fundamental questions that

concern us22 _{and that human psychological inclinations must be under-}

stood in terms of physiological factors.23 _{According to Nietzsche, human}

beings are organisms whose mode of knowing the world is rooted in their physiological drives and instincts. Appropriating various aspects of nineteenth-century biology, particularly that of the embryologist Wilhelm Roux’s notion of the organism as an inner struggle between parts and the Anglo-German zoologist William Rolph’s principle of insatiability, Nietzsche argues that we are intentional beings that seek

out conditions for our growth.24 _{Consequently, our relation to things}

other than ourselves, according to Nietzsche, is never disinterested but is always guided and informed by our instincts. He contends that our per- spectives are rooted in these instincts, writing that knowledge is ‘actually

nothing but a certain behaviour of the instincts toward one another’.25

He further writes:

It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against. Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all other drives to accept as a norm.

26

As organisms made up of a multiplicity of instincts and drives, we are capable of viewing things from multiple points of view. As knowers we are a multiplicity of perspectives engaged in an inner struggle for dominance and temporally under the control of a dominating perspec- tive. Arguing that our knowledge is always conditioned by our nature as biological and intentional beings, Nietzsche’s perspectivism holds in contrast to the notion of epistemological disinterestedness historically fostered by metaphysical realism that our knowledge is contextual and empirical.

Contextualism denies the possibility of intrinsically credible beliefs from which other beliefs are inferred in favour of a locally holistic conception

of justification.27 _{Contextualism is thus a form of anti-foundationalist}

thought. Foundationalism takes two forms, both of which Nietzsche rejects. Structural foundationalism maintains that there is a certain structure to our knowledge such that it is founded on inferences from basic, intrinsically credible beliefs. Substantive foundationalism adds

Nietzsche’s Perspectival Theory of Knowledge 61

that these basic beliefs must be of a certain kind. Both forms adopt an atomistic conception of justification whereby intrinsic credibility entails that our basic beliefs are justified independently of the particular context of our inquiry. Although contextualism appeals to default justification whereby some beliefs are ‘basic’ because they frame the parameters of intelligibility for an inquiry, these basic beliefs nevertheless depend on a host of contextually variable factors such as the particular inquiry in

which we are engaged or the current state of our knowledge.28 _{By adopt-}

ing a form of contextualism, Nietzsche aims to replace the metaphysical realist view from nowhere with the perspectivist view from somewhere.

Defining a perspective as an ‘interest of certain types of life’,29 _{he argues}

that our truths are irretrievably entwined with our interests. A perspec- tive for Nietzsche, as we have seen, is a point of view that we take on a matter, the point of view being determined by our context and situation. Understood analogously to an optical perspective whereby the optical perspective influences how the object ‘looks’ to the perceiver, a cogni- tive perspective influences how we understand the world. Perspectivism thus aims to induce a form of epistemological modesty by claiming that we cannot acquire extra-perspectival knowledge. We cannot know the world from a God’s Eye view or no point of view at all.

Extra-perspectival knowledge is conceivable, according to Nietzsche, only if we permit both the objectionable concept of the thing-in-itself or Platonic eternal verities and the necessary rationalist cognitive tools. We have seen from our discussion of the demise of the cognitivist form of metaphysical realism that genealogical and historical inquiry reveal, in Nietzsche’s view, that what was considered extra-perspectival knowl- edge was in fact only a distorted perspective or point of view. Since the God’s Eye View and the thing-in-itself are mutually dependent, accord- ing to Nietzsche, the demise of one must lead to the inevitable collapse of the other. Nietzsche argues that without the possibility of a God’s Eye view the distinction between things-in-themselves and appearances dissolves and with it the basis for scepticism.

Thus, in keeping with his epistemic quarrel with metaphysical realism Nietzsche denies that reality is epistemically inaccessible to our cognitive constitution. He does this by arguing that the concept of the thing-in- itself or a metaphysical world that is inaccessible to our cognitive facul- ties is a contradiction in terms. Nietzsche argues that it is impossible to conceptualise such a notion. Any attempt to conceptualise it is a fruitless activity because, he argues, ‘We cannot look around our own corner: it is a hopeless curiosity that wants to know what other kinds of intellects and