V.V. (20) Perspectivism: Nietzsche, Stencil (& Pynchon)

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> The excerpt from 'The Situation as N-Dimensional Mishmash' (unpubl.):
> 
>       "Short of examining the entire history of each individual
>     participating;" Stencil wrote, "short of anatomizing each soul,
>     what hope has anyone of understanding a Situation? It may be
>     that the civil servants of the future will not be accredited
>     unless they first receive a degree in brain surgery."
>                                                     (470)
> 
> And then follows Sidney Stencil's cerebral excursion into his own cerebrum,
> not a little bit a la Raquel Welsh et. al. in _Fantastic Voyage_ ('66).
> 
> http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0%2C4586%2C2190557%2C00.html
> 
> Though Stencil, as an English F.O. operative, is interested in the
> "Situation", the implication for "History" is quite obvious. If any given
> current "Situation" unfolds according to the interplay of the perspectives
> (defined thus above by Stencil) of the various participants, then previous
> "Situations" can only be (properly? objectively? absolutely?) understood if
> and when every individual's (past and present) perspective is taken into
> account and analysed. Which, likewise, isn't humanly possible either. Kinda
> like what ol' F.W. Nietzsche was saying. Eg.
> 
> http://www.uccs.edu/~bpboenin/perspect.html
> 
>     Descartes formulated his conception of the world in terms of various
>     dualities: subject and object, knower and that which is known, body and
>     mind, the "extended, unthinking thing," and the "unextended, thinking
>     thing." He established a clear dichotomy between the observer and that
>     which is observed, between the external world and those entities which
>     procure knowledge about it. The reigning worldview was that there was
>     indeed an external, objective world that existed entirely "in itself,"
>     that is, completely independent from any (human) perspective. One gets
>     the impression that it was believed that external objects "emanate"
>     certain properties for us to observe. Every object has intrinsic
>     meaning, order, and definition. It is the job of the observer to observe
>     these qualities that "belong" to, or are contained in, the objects.
> 
>     Nietzsche's view is quite different. As Mark McCreary states, Nietzsche
>     held that "the world and the individual form a continuum that cannot be
>     set apart." The contention that the 'world' and the mind or observer are
>     distinct and independent is a fiction, argued Nietzsche. Arguing for a
>     distinction between the true world and the apparent world is, according
>     to Nietzsche, "reduced to the antithesis 'world' and 'nothing.'" For
>     Nietzsche, there is no world apart from a perspective. As his aphorism
>     goes, "No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations."
> 
> Though such a prospect leads to pessimism -- perhaps even nihilism -- and
> even contemplations of suicide for Stencil, this need not be the case.
> 
> 'Nietzsche's Telling the Truth About History:  Nietzsche's Second "Untimely
> Meditation" Interpreted Through Joyce Appleby'
> by
> David L. R. Kosalka
> 
> http://www.geocities.com/lemmingland/untimely.html
> 
> snip
> 
>     It is quite clear that Nietzsche's position does not require the
>     complete abandonment of a search for historical knowledge. In a passage
>     from the Genealogy of Morals, one of the most "historical" of his works,
>     he attempted to give a description of his perspectivism that outlines
>     how this knowledge is possible. There he argues "There is only a
>     perspective seeing, only a perspective 'knowing'; and the more eyes,
>     different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will
>     our 'concept' of this thing, our 'objectivity' be." As he presents
>     it in "The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life", "it is the task
>     of history to be the mediator between them and thus again and again to
>     inspire and lend the strength for the production of the great man,"
>     a thriving culture filled with life. However, this can only be done, as
>     Appleby indicated, in the full exposure and awareness of the
>     difficulties of historical re-enactment.
> 
> And this, to me, sounds kinda like Pynchon.
> 
> best

Kinda like, but maybe not. 
 
Kinda like the Pynchon of V. perhaps. 

Definitely Soft Shoe Sidney. 

Maybe not Stencil. 

Excellent post,  see The Education, "THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE
(1903)", Henry Adams. 

I posted a bunch from it yesterday, but I guess it was too
long and the Pynchon-L machine is still digesting it. 

As I have argued previously, I find not reason to attribute
Nietzschean Perspectivism (the Personal Perspective of the
Sophists) to the applied author of V. or any Pynchon novel.  

The English thought that Adams refers to, is the scientific
tradition and this, a bit ironically, he calls chaos. It is
the Objective, Scientific Perspective. It can be traced to
Democritus and to the Devine emanation of thought/cosmos.
This will become the very Soul of TRP's works after V. 

Adams then turns to German thought, here we have the
Platonic, the Revelatory Perspective, Hegel and Leibniz,
obviously he doesn't mention Heidegger, but his Perspective
too, is Revelatory. Pynchon goes after German thought, not
Kant, but the dialecticians and the neo-platonists,
including Marx,  with a Hammer. 

Later, Pynchon, turns to Freud and Max Weber, neither
English, but ironically, both of the Objective Scientific
Tradition. 

But P, is obviously neither German nor English, but
American. If we are to discover his philosophical
Perspective, I suggest we search closer to home.