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This paper discusses Nietzsche's epistemological perspectivalism as a hermeneutical philosophy. As Babich has shown,¹ it is neither a form of relativism, nor a form of classical skepticism, both of which suppose an agnostic realism. Nor is it a form of social constructivism derivative from any of these. Among possible forms of perspectivalism, one follows naturally from the principle that theoretical scientific inquiry — Nietzsche's Apollinian approach — necessarily presupposes something in the lifeworld for which scientific theory sets the conditions or gives the explanation. Since the lifeworld is the world of human culture and, therefore, of human will and purposes, scientific theory necessarily serves what Nietzsche calls the "Will to Power." Absent this consideration, scientific theory is detached from the lifeworld, and as Nietzsche proclaims, is devoid of (objective) "truth." In this perspective, scientific theory is pure means, and, since it lacks any dynamic moral or cultural end, it fails to serve human life in its creative moral and cultural dimensions, and on this account falls into sterility, meaninglessness or, what Nietzsche calls, "nihilism." Only if scientific theory and cultural praxis are deliberately joined in historical, moral, and cultural dialogue, will scientific theory avoid this human fate. This implies a role for metaphor in discovery, and for the Dionysian approach in discriminating among perspectives in multiperspectival inquiry.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-2428-9_17

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