HUMANS IN THE WORLD: INTRODUCTION TO RADICAL PERSPECTIVISM

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1. Introduction

I use as background for my analysis the theory of radical perspectivism, which I explain briefly, below. Radical perspectivism is a new philosophical theory that I began writing about in 1991, and completed formulating its basic tenets by 1992. I have since been editing it, throwing darts at its different parts, but never published it, except a couple of articles in conference Proceedings, and a few chapters published on the Internet(1). In the second part of my presentation, I apply some of the basic tenets of such theory to comparing the universe to university studies.
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2. Radical Perspectivism

Our evaluating others, or for that matter anything at all, depends on our particular perspective.  Like dots on a receding drawing, so are we, humans, both subject and object of our perspectivism: subject to the extent that we draw conclusions about other people based on our particular background, or perspective; and object to the extent that we are being perceived by others based on our actual or imagined actions or beliefs.

Perspectival conflict may be experienced by individuals who are in conflict with themselves, as when they are evaluating their values, form a new identity, experience personality conflict, or do not know which course of action, or underlying value to adopt. This shows that our ability to imagine or interpret a variety of perspectives is a “detached” mental skill that may have little to do with our particular biological or phylogenetic make-up, or else we would never experience conflict within ourselves. In other words, our perspectivism has a life of its own based on our ability to think and imagine, and therefore think or imagine even about ourselves as if we can be the object of our examination. As a detached eye looking at ourselves, our self is not ours to imagine, but something out there just as imaginable as other phenomena can be. It is in that sense that each one of us has the potential of becoming a roving phenomenologist who, to paraphrase Edmund Husserl (2), can bracket our own existence out of existence in order to be able to see what really exists. By this I mean using our metal abilities selflessly to represent the world, as in role-play or hypothetically, instead of egotistically imposing a human-centered interpretation on the world.
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3. Universal Perspectives

If we force perspectivism to its logical conclusion, we can’t help but realize its universal manifestations. This is so because we can imagine perspectives which most humans, fixated as they have been most of the time on just their self-centered views, may have failed to acknowledge even exist. In other words, we can expand our understanding to include actual or imaginable perspectives of  non-humans that reveal what the world might be really like, as contrasted to how we would have liked it to be. Take, for example, imaginable perspectives that animals may hold toward humans. Humans may be perceived by other animals from their own non-human perspectives, depending on their needs or understanding of the world. Humans know this all too well, or else they wouldn’t have written popular stories of humans’ struggle with “nature” in which more often than not they are the winners, but occasionally also losers in their actual or perceived “struggle” for survival. Witness, for instance, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, with a whale protagonist to match; or any number of stories about “man’s best friend,” the dog, which often showed more empathy for the other, particularly its master, than its master himself did.

More broadly, such perspectivism may be extended to all world parts which humans can interpret to have a “perspective,“ albeit frequently dependent on humans to discover.  Witness, for instance, the almost anthropomorphic participation in human affairs of rivers, seas, and mountains in the Homeric epics, their deification, and therefore presumably god-like intervention, notwithstanding. Or the divine reverence for things natural held by any number of non-industrialized cultures, such as, the native American with its apparently all-inclusive perspectivism.
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4. Selflessness

Given humans’ ability to imagine, and thus imagine world perspectives held by non-humans, there is hardly anything in the universe which does not have at least an imaginable perspective, meaning, which humans could not empathize with by role-playing in their imagination, or articulating hypothetically in their speech. It follows that as humans learn more about such perspectives, they learn more about the world. Given that the universe is made up mostly of non-human world parts, such as, other animals, plants, and all things inanimate, humans can lend the universe their intellectual skills to allow it to speak to us through-us. Instead of humanizing the world out of existence, in the sense of explaining everything in terms only of human interests or survival, we can lend it an unconditionally selfless voice. By “selfless” I mean perspectival and empathic, or to paraphrase Immanuel Kant, “disinterested,” as opposed to biased or egotistic.
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5. Ethics

As our perspectivism changes over time, so does our view of other people, or, more broadly, the world. Perhaps it is this fluid perspectivism in our value judgements that gives us,  humans, some hope to re-make ourselves according to presumably desirable perspectives. It is at that level of reflective perspectivism that ethics, or the study of right and wrong, resembles art: Just as an artist may choose to remake a work of art, so are we capable of studying our perspectives to reaffirm, remake, or altogether reject our ethical beliefs.
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6. Survival

Often what seems antithetical to our immediate interests could be beneficial to humans in the long run. By this I mean when we help interpret the world selflessly, we may help ourselves survive by keeping the conditions that are necessary for our survival intact. More bluntly, this type of radical perspectivism requires that we world our thinking so we can speak with a universal voice.

The universe has a way of punishing arrogantly self-centered or “hubristic” humans through the law of equal returns. For example, destructive humans must muddle through the environment they have destroyed, polluted, or failed to understand, which in turn my lead even to their extinction. It is at that point that humans may realize they are not alone in the world, in fact cannot exist without all the other world parts that helped them rise as human. Under a radically perspectivistic vision of human existence, humans can expand their sense of identity to include the world they had so far denied or denigrated, and thus see themselves as the world-in-human-form, instead of dualistically as humans versus the world. They can begin to think or imagine as humans-in-the-context-of-a-world that enabled them to rise as humans, and thus think or imagine, and therefore think of the world as their larger self that thinks or imagines-through- them.
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7. Social Science

Much of what is generally known as “social science” is inextricably linked to our perspectivism. This is so because without an understanding of different points of view, we couldn’t possibly recognize our own as ours, or other people’s as different from our own. Without such recognition, in turn, we would be blind to cultural differences, since we would lack the perspective, or “distance,” necessary to see our own perspective in the larger context of other perspectives that altogether make understanding of the world possible. We would be blind to intricate differences in the kaleidoscope of human variety, let alone the imaginable differences between humans and everything else in the universe.
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8. Education

We can distance ourselves-from-ourselves, as in suspending our self-centered ego, so that we may freely and unconditionally lend our thinking capacities to other world-parts to accurately represent them, meaning, represent the world as-it-might-have-liked-to-be-represented if it had the same capacity to think or feel as humans do. This in turn points to a type of radically perspectivistic education that requires humans transcend their self-centered struggle for survival, and begin to see learning as an end-in-itself that serves to represent, empathize with, and lend a human voice to other world parts. Education as representation, as opposed to domination of others, control of nature, or human-only survival.

Education as representation of the other, which ultimately includes the universe, is what education itself is, or else it would not be educative, meaning, learning something new. In other words, if education were merely a rehashing of the old, as it might be when we impose on the universe a human-centered perspective, then education would be like a con game on a grand scale that adds nothing really new to our understanding. For example, seeing a river only in terms of what it can offer humans, such as, water, transportation, food, or energy, may not be how we could imagine the river itself might see us, and therefore not be able to understand it. When humans end up polluting a river through unbridled industrial activity, which is often rooted in greed or thoughtlessness, they think mainly of benefitting themselves, instead of also what their activities may do to the river itself, or the fish that depend on it for their survival. A more universal use of our thinking abilities would be to represent the possible perspective of the river, or any of the world parts effected by our actions, and thus allow the world to speak to us.

A self-congratulatory education may at best lead to a state of euphoria, such as, the idea that of all possible perspectives, the only one worth examining, or even possible, is the human one. “Humans at the top of the universal totem pole.” Instead, education implies learning things which psychologically may be even painful for humans to acknowledge, such as, the idea that in fact they may be no more immortal than any other animal, instead of the type of human-centered illusion they often imagine themselves to deserve; or that other animals may have just as much a right to survival, albeit with allowance for human survival, as humans do, and therefore ethically no less deserving our protection, or at least our understanding.

Education as perspectival understanding is an exercise in self-overcoming, understanding-of-the-other, and imaginative empathy. To be world-educated, meaning, to understand oneself in the world,  one must overcome self-centered or provincial perspectives. It is in that sense that an ethnocentric, racist, nationalistic, or even “humanistic” education, in the narrow sense of human-centered or “for-humans-only” type pedagogy, may teach more about what we already know, than about what we don’t. Such “prejudgemental” education becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as in a political contest where no one candidate is willing to acknowledge the superiority of the other, instead of a selfless use of human reason to understanding the other.

The question may be raised, why should humans ever bother to cleanse their education from all the human-centered biases that make them feel good? After all, aren’t thinking and reason human skills that humans have to a higher degree, and therefore also the privilege of using to their advantage? The reason why humans may believe their skills are rightfully theirs to use, or abuse, as they may see fit, might be precisely because of their lack of wider perspective.  Without all the non-human world parts that collectively make human existence possible, humans would not be, let alone think as they do. Seen contextually, humans in fact owe their continued existence to such parts, and therefore what they can do, such parts can do also, albeit through-humans. It is in that sense that when humans think, the world thinks through them. This means that human thinking is not only for humans to use to benefit only themselves, but more broadly the universe that allowed them to rise as human.

Education becomes political, and therefore miseducative, when in pursuit of one’s interests at the expense of truth, as when states set up educational systems to indoctrinate youth in state nationalism, popular myths regarding the superiority of one group over another, or more generally the presumed superiority of homo sapiens over a seemingly unthinking, barbaric, or crude world.  How could one possibly hope to understand a world which by definition is foreign to us, if we don’t “world” our understanding?

Historically, education has been a mixed bag of self-congratulatory lies and reality, as is seen from the fact that while science has relatively recently shocked human pride to factual submission, at the same time human vanity has kept the self-centered, egotistic flame of human superiority alive. Witness, for instance, our obviously slanted interpretations of the role humans play in the universe depicted in any number of our religious, political, or philosophical myths. As I mentioned earlier, without at least something new to learn about, as when we attempt to understand non-human perspectives, we could hardly claim to be world-educated. A perspectival education, on the other hand, has the cathartic effect of leaving our human ego behind, and concentrate, instead, on revealing the other. Our minds become universal “archaeologists” revealing and unearthing, than ours to use in order to master the “other.” We carry in our heads the equivalent of a mental gyroscope that can reveal to us the vast possibilities of a universe too large for humans ever to hope to successfully change in their own image.
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9. Universities

Universities have traditionally come closer than any other human institution to engaging our minds in such endeavor, and therefore representing the universe. Ever since they were originally set up in the Middle Ages, universities put emphasis on a well rounded, presumably unbiased education, thanks mainly to Aristotle, or, more correctly, his followers who decided to set up an institution to embody his educational beliefs(3).  Unlike other institutions that are designed mainly to dominate, help humans survive, deceive, or eulogize, universities have been since the beginning driven by a thirst for detached, disinterested knowledge, and therefore, to a large degree, by learning about perspectives so far foreign or unknown.

Universities allowed the seeds of perspectival learning to germinate, thus in the process returning humans to their universal fold. No matter how concerned with their own survival, humans soon realized that ideas have a longer longevity of their own, as does the universe they represent. When rubbing shoulders with ideas, humans leave their legacy behind longer, than if they had all the wealth or power of an emperor. In fact, even emperors depend on others to write about them, or represent them, or else they are no more immortal than an elephant or an ant that die with nothing else but other ants or elephants to carry on their perennial search for food. It is in that sense of mindful humans reflecting on themselves and the world that humans are God-like: if the universe is God, and God is Logos, then professors must be the priests of a universal perspectivism that humans evolved to represent.

Education as understanding-things-foreign began, as I mentioned, with the founding of universities in the Middle Ages, in the modern sense of “university” as an institution devoted to the unfettered expansion of a diversity of intellectual horizons and understandings. At their core, universities allowed communities of scholars, first in Europe, and later around the world, to escape the daily grind of  provincial viewpoints that relied on the uncritical acceptance of limited traditions regarding the nature of reality. They stretched the human imagination beyond the world of the provincially egotistic self. University studies became an exercise in the philosophical understanding of the world, meaning, a selfless or “disinterested” reflection in which the mind as an end-in-itself freely interprets the world. As a detached entity capable of interpretation, the mind is thus “objective,” meaning, not strictly human-owned, but universal, as in “university studies.”

Universities did not take their final form until several centuries later, including protecting their faculties from political persecution for their ideas, which might have hindered a truly independent or “philosophical” study of subjects, by offering them tenure. Never before did an institution exist with the aim of turning the masses, or at least a substantial portion of humans, into thinkers capable of recognizing the value of a well rounded education, and therefore presumably appreciative of even diverse or “foreign” perspectives.

Structurally predetermined to serve the need to know, than preserve the status quo, universities gradually redefined “human” to mean “foreign,” rather than “familiar.” This is so because as humans realize their role as interpreters in a universe that allowed them to be, they seek to give voice to the unknown or “foreign” elements in the universe, including themselves as travelers in evolutionary time.

When seen as the product of evolution, and not merely as the birthright of humans, “mind” becomes the world’s way of thinking about itself through-humans. Once the mind is seen as a product of a universe capable of generating it, albeit in human form, then we begin to think of the universe as capable of thinking about-itself.  Since university communities center around the workings of different minds, we could say that universities are the human laboratories of a universe in microcosm reflecting on itself.
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10. Aristotle

Aristotle had no misgivings or hesitation regarding the human potential for discovery, as he not only redefined human, but also gave precise instructions on how one can go about becoming educated, including, intense study in the seven liberal arts, which in his book Metaphysics he named, and which later became th sine qua non or core of university studies. Aristotle’s proposal was translated word-for-word from the original Greek into Latin, and became what came to be known for centuries in the Latin west, where universities were first founded, as the trivium and quadrivium. Aristotle’s plan broke the ties with a past immersed in projecting only self-centered perspectives, as in pre-university centers of learning, and recommended, instead, what might be seen as the first universal perspectivism, or, more commonly, “liberal arts.” The long standing tradition in the liberal arts continues to this day to drive university life toward the universalization of the human psyche.

Prior to Aristotle’s diversified intellectualism, even “intellectuals” limited their teaching to just their own philosophy or perspective, as contrasted to the university system that requires that students take courses from a variety of professors in a variety fields, each one of which, depending on the nature of the subject, is taught with an eye to the widest possible exposure to known theories or views. Prior to the emergence of university life there were schools and other centers of learning, such as Plato’s Academy, where teaching was characterized more with propagating a single point of view, usually the teacher’s, than with the selfless dissemination of a diversity of viewpoints. With the exception perhaps of the library of Alexandria, which was on its face not a university, with a system of admitting, promoting and graduating students, but as its name implies, merely a well endowed “library,” there were no centers of learning rewarding their students with degrees for both their well-rounded or “universally” inclined education, as in general or liberal arts studies; and their field of specialization.
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11. Censorship

A mind censored or scared into doctrinal submission, is no longer mindful, in the sense of being free to exercise its critical thinking and representational abilities. Hence the perennial concern universities have had with academic freedom, to allow mindful teaching and learning to flourish, as opposed to the political manipulation of ideas to promote this or that human interest. The unfettered use of mindful research, which universities were presumably set up to protect, ends up becoming through its own inner dynamic of representation, revealing of universal perspectives. Perhaps too scared of their role as mere interpreters, which universities seem to encourage, as opposed to their privileged position as the children of God, humans often resist allowing universities to upset their comfortable traditions. Hence political attempts at censorship and ostracism of so-called “unpopular ideas.”
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12. Doctor of Philosophy

Everything universities did since their inception in the 11th century AD led them inevitably to embrace the foreign, and build upon, but not become confounded by, the familiar. Even when mired inside myopically provincial politics, they maintained their love for academic freedom, and therefore the inner logic of freely representational inquiry. Take, for instance, their choice of both wording and degree. Universities began granting the “Doctor of Philosophy” or Ph.D. degree in all subjects, even those which are not strictly philosophical, as homage to their intellectual origins. In other words, they declared through their award structure and nomenclature that knowledge should be pursued for its own sake, as did presumably philosophers of old who “loved wisdom,” as the etymology of the Greek term PHILO-SOPHY denotes, than in a narrowly utilitarian way. Even presumably utilitarian subjects, such as, business and engineering, would henceforth be required to use the mind in a detached, or as we might say, research-oriented way, devoid as much as possible from immediate human interests that may bend it to politically advantageous propaganda.
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13. Research

University scholars are generally trained to empathize with perspectives foreign from those they may be familiar with, even if it means sacrificing their values or upbringing at the altar of understanding the universe. If they failed to do so on many occasions, as when some of the scholars at the University of Salamanca derided Columbus’ seemingly outlandish views of the world, it was not because of anything inherently reactionary in university ideals, but the threat such acknowledgment may represent to those who must learn to live selflessly. Unfortunately, no matter how much universities may have tried, political realities keep pulling them back to the self-centered mold of human greed and interests. This has given rise to the conflict between pure and applied research; the notion of professor as scholar versus professor as community organizer; or at the social level the historic conflict between town and gown. Such conflicts are the pathology of a larger enigma facing humanity, namely, should humans endeavor to represent the universe accurately, for example, through a radically perspectivistic approach of the type I described earlier; or should they be like any other animal with an instinct for self-gratification, except perhaps smarter?
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14. Nomadic Lifestyle

Universities not only redefined human to mean foreign, they also reassessed what humans can do, or should be doing. In this they agreed, as I mentioned earlier, with Aristotle’s intellectual interpretation of human as “developed mind,” than merely well fed animal (4). The inner logic of Aristotle’s original interpretation transcended even his own Greek nationalism, since by definition a well developed mind cannot be instinctively patriotic, or else it is not free to criticize its own nationalistic roots (and therefore not really mindful). By virtue of the universities’ historic emphasis on a well rounded education, students were lifted out of their particular nationalistic or linguistic biases, and joined the celestial bodies in their rootlessness and travels. In fact, historically when universities were first founded in the Middle Ages they were composed mainly of so-called “foreign students.” This type of internationalism is symbolic in both form and substance of the rootlessness of ideas. Even to this day, professors are renown for their nomadic lifestyle, which might explain the large number of originally foreign nationals on university campuses world-wide, including both students and faculty. The mind knows no country, which is at it should be, or else nationalism would stain representation with a muddled “patriotic” bias.
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15. Conclusion

Universities have become places of innovation and revolution because they are pulled by their rootless “representationalism” to reject all types of nationalistic or myopic attachments to monolithic doctrines, unexamined assumptions, or self-promoting propagandas. They are collectively the brains of a humanity looking outward toward the universe that gave it birth, than inward toward a blind ego that takes itself seriously. It is in that sense of universal harmony that one may argue that what will bring humans together in a peaceful coexistence with nature, let alone each other, are not just political or environmentalist NGOs, but university life.

Universities center themselves around ideas, which are the transparent mirror of a self-reflecting universe, than around power, wealth or fame. They are the perennial reminders of how vain this life can be when spent mainly to live comfortably, than educationally.

Universities offer humanity its last hope for everlasting peace: peace with nature by representing it, instead of trying to control it; peace with each other because we see other people as fruitful minds, as do millions of scholars around the world today who collaborate in research, than as “foreigners;” and finally peace within ourselves by realizing that we have a whole universe behind us that all this time supported and evolved us, and therefore as our larger self that almost never dies. By comparison to our Universal Self our human-centered worries and concerns about our individual survival seem so insignificant.
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1. See RP chapters published on the Internet at http://wbs.csu.edu/~amakedon/RadicalPerspectivism/book.html For complete bibliographic references to articles published in MPES Proceedings (1992) and ERIC, see on-line resume at http://webs.csu.edu/~amakedon/CSUhomepg.html I intend to seek a publisher only after I have completed editing all of the chapters, which I do leisurely, and therefore without a time deadline.
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2. Husserl, Phenomenology of the Mind
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3. See Hastings Rashdall’s works on the establishment of modern universities during the Middle Ages, such as, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages , 2 vols, Oxford University Press, 1936. Also Nathan Schachner, The Medieval Universities, London, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1938.
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4. Aristotle, Metaphysics; Ethics.
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