The notion of perspectivity refers to the fact that the cognition and self-understanding of human beings is bound to their point of view, be it literally their position in space or their linguistic-cultural identity. Examples of perspectivity thus range from perception (I see the same room from a different angle than anyone else) to intersubjective and intercultural perspectivity (where e.g., the discovery of America is instead seen as the encounter or collision of cultures), and even extend to perspectivism in the shaping of one’s life. The last type of perspectivism has penetrated the domain of life counseling. Even if we are not partial to personal coaching, we can hardly avoid the advice of various media on how to abandon our rigid way of looking at life and shift our perspective to get the most out of it. Perspective is an extensively used metaphor. But what exactly does it mean in philosophy? In his contribution, Jakub Čapek first outlined the way in which perspectivism became an important philosophical theme thanks to Friedrich Nietzsche. He then examined the question of whether the analysis of human perspectivism in Jan Patočka’s work can be considered a form of perspectivism (or even relativism).
Jakub Čapek, Ph.D. is an associate professor of philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague. In 2001, he received his Ph.D. at the Université Paris Nanterre and Charles University, Prague. His areas of specialization are 20th-century German and French philosophy, especially phenomenology and hermeneutics. He published a monograph on Merleau-Ponty (Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Myslet podle vnímání [Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Thinking According to Perception], Prague, 2012), and a book-length contribution to the action theory (Action et situation: Le sens du possible entre phénoménologie et herméneutique, Olms, 2010). He co-edited the volumes Pragmatic Perspectives in Phenomenology (Routledge 2017, with Ondřej Švec) and Phenomenology and Personal Identity (Springer 2021, with Sophie Loidolt).
Ludger Hagedorn, IWM Permanent Fellow, moderated the colloquium discussion.
