DEBRA B. BERGOFFEN, PERSPECTIVISM WITHOUT NIHILISM

BIOGRAPHIC AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC

SELECTED SUMMARY NOTES ON THE TEXT

N. declared God dead in order to initiate "a new relationship between DESIRE [for transcending finitude] and its projected objects of satisfaction." (p. 58) The God that he declared dead was "western culture's projection of its desire for tha absolute." (p. 59) That projection produced NIHILISM because it refused to see itself as a perspective. By accepting the insight that every perspective has one meaning at a time, N. sought to deny nihilism. That is, he accused western culture's God of nihilism: it repressed desire into an absolute, which was nothing.

PERSPECTIVE IN THE RENAISSANCE: The Renaissance, with its affirmation of an absolute point of reference in painting, articulated God as the absolute. Descartes was central in this project: he transformed "finite subjectivity into the absolute point of reference." (p. 60). The thrust of science, philosophy, and art in the Renaissance thus is to "show the desire for the absolute." (p.60)

That is what Nietzsche sought to destroy when he declared God dead.

MOVIES, CUBISM, AND ABSOLUTE PERSPECTIVE: Bergoffen declares that the invention of the movie camera exposed the absolute perspective of the Renaissance as a convention and showed it was not an ultimate truth. But it did NOT immediately destroy the congruence between an absolute and a human perspective, which N. wanted to destroy. The movie, reinforced by cubism in painting, she says, simply substituted "multiplicity of perspectives for the convention of the absolute perspective." (p. 61) That is, the One would become manifest through the many.

"By situating oneself within the totality of the species, the desire for the absolute may still be articulated within the framework of the metaphysics of the absolute." (p. 62) Cubism permitted the viewer to imagine himself entering that totality, thus reaffirming absoluteness in modernist terms. This perpetuated the repression caused by desire for the absolute (and perpetuated the RESENTMENT of the slave morality against which N. fought--although Bergoffen does not examine that thread as such).

NIETZSCHE'S ATTACK ON THE ABSOLUTE: Renouncing the absolute, he sought "new strategies of articulating the desire" for the absolute. He "renounced God as the object of our desire for the absolute." (p. 62) He had to do that in order to attack NIHILISM: he thought of nihilism as any thought that devalues "the life of becoming," especially a thought that makes an immutable hierarchy of values--which is what western philosophy as a whole did, centered in God. (p. 63)

THE THOUGHT OF ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME: Bergoffen offers a brief glimpse at N.'s hard thought of eternal recurrence, which merits much contemplation. Her glimpse employs the issue of THE ABSOLUTE. When we believe in God, we affirm him "as the object of our desire for the absolute." (p.62) But N. finds this to be wrong, because it represses desire and perpetuates anger/resentment; it flies in the face of "becomingness" as the true character of living. Therefore, says Bergoffen, N. demands "that we transform our desire for the ONE into a desire for ONENESS, that we transform the desire for the singular [God, absoluteness] to the desire for singularity [ourselves as unique, perspectives as absolute]." (p. 62, my emphases)

B. says that N. says that this is the problem of the philosopher who identifies his postion with the absolute: As he does so, he represses the relation between the absolute and his own existential particularity; consequently, his desire for the absolute is fulfilled EVEN AS THE EXISTENTIAL SOURCE OF HIS DESIRE IS HIDDEN. (p. 63)

NIHILISM, NATURAL LAW, RELATIVISM: B. constructs a valuable thread of thought about what follows after God is murdered by Nietzsche. Oversimplified, it goes like this:

• God is murdered.

• This lifts the repression caused by focusing on him one's desire for the absolute.

• This thus destroys the nihilism created by such focus on the absolute.

• But a new nihilism replaces it, which sees no value in non-absolute human situation. "Thus, while the death of God is the analogue of the technology of the camera, [philosophical] cubism signals a wave of skepticism [nihilism] that threatens to undermine the culture." (p. 64)

• Mistakenly, the atheist who has murdered God with Nietzsche thinks he has removed an irrelevancy; he substitutes in God's place "natural law," "progress," "doctrine of historicism," all of which perpetuate the repressed desire for the absolute, which was lifted when God was murdered. (p. 66)

• The atheist, secular humanist thus perpetuates nihilism, "the devaluation of the particular perspective per se." (p.66)

• Nietzsche's perspectivism corrects this echo of absolutism in atheist, secular humanism. It allows one to ABANDON absolute centers, whether defined as God or surrogates in Reason, for it reveals the repression of human values perpetrated by God-centeredness, the desire for the absolute. RELATIVISM AS PERSPECTIVISM "affirms the value of the human insofar as it insists that the particularity and multiplicity of the human condition is the source of meaning and value." (p. 67)

• HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN: Thus, what is left after God dies is not a residue of humanity. "It is everything that is." (p. 68)

• WILL TO POWER CLARIFIED: B. insists that N.'s "will to power" does not mean "might makes right." Rather she says, perspectivism replaces the convention of absolute centeredness with "the concept of the interpretive center," a concept taken from Fredric Jameson.

• But N.'s philosophy failed to take us all the way to an understanding of how such an interpretive center would operate. This raises the danger that the "we" of perspectivism will become a dogmatic absolute as repressive as God. (p. 70)

• But N. left us with the tools of laughter, creativity, and play. These "may direct us toward fleshing out the configurations of the ways in which the desire for the absolute affirms itself in a philosophy and politics of perspectivism." (p.71)

SIGNIFICANCE, EVALUATION, AND RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER WORK

1. SOKAL AFFAIR: Bergoffen helps us to understand the voices of Alan Sokal and Steven Weinberg as the voices of secular humanist absolutism. Sokal's "hoax" or "parody" emerged from his desire for the absolute, as expressed not in God but in physical laws. Weinberg gives critical affirmation to this message in the hoax. He perpetuates the distinction of the "two cultures" of hard science and soft humanities described by C.P. Snow in the 'fifties. Bergoffen's analysis of the genesis of perspectivism in Nietzsche allows us to see the Sokal affair, and secular humanism generally, in a different light. The Snowian dichotomy was between two camps of absolutists, those believing in natural law and those believing in a multiple-perspectived modernist absolute, whether or not called God. Sokal points up a dichotomy between those believing in natural law as an absolute and those (po-mos) not believing at all in an absolute. The battle has advanced to the stage that Nietzsche would have wanted.

2. DESTRUCTIVENESS OF ABSOLUTENESS IN THOUGHT: We cast this insight in terms of the destructiveness of the desire for the absolute. The affirmation of the absolute represses the human genesis of that affirmation. It permits destruction of humans to take place in the name of the absolute. Destruction takes the form of slavery, represssion, resentment, death by violence. The denial of the absolute relieves the situation. However, it allows for one perspective to be espoused as absolute. That leads to more destructiveness (see Bosnia, Nazism). Nietzschean perspectivism, completed as a philosophy through laughter, creativity, and play, holds out the (romantic?) hope for a resolution. But the pipe bomb in Olympic park in Atlanta suggests how difficult the project remains.

3. AN APPROACH TO WALLACE STEVENS: Bergoffen's interpretation of the function of THE ABSOLUTE in Nietzsche's thought gives us a window through which to examine the goal of Wallace Stevens. Stevens appears to some to be like the philosopher who seeks the absolute. He does that by flirting with the multiplicities of perspective produced in modern culture by the camera, cubism, etc. He seems to be trapped between a desire for the absolute and a flickering recognition that the absolute, as glimpsed through the multiplicities of perspective, may not be there. Yet he desires it. If we want to deal with the conundrum of Stevens's deathbed conversion to Catholicism, this may offer us an insight. He wanted the absolute throughout his work and life. He felt the repression involved in that desire. He could not clarify its cause; that is, he could not ascribe to Nietzsche's perspectivism. In the end, after a lifetime of flirtation with perspectivism and with the absolute, he gave up the struggle to be a (post)modernist and fell back into the traditional absolutist position. This interpretation would be somewhat consistent with the view of Stevens put forth by Donald Revell.

4. NIETZSCHE NOT LIBERAL: A reader's comment on Bergoffen and a reply from THE PROGRAMME.