Thus far we have focussed on the uses and applications of linear perspective and its variants in a technical sense. In some positivist programmes of the nineteenth century this focus would have defined the limits of the field. Metaphorical uses of perspective in terms of point of view, standpoint, position, or even plan, either of an individual or a society, would not have been included. Our reason for doing so is simple. Metaphors of perspective have become much more than clever or elegant turns of phrase. Particularly in the twentieth century a significant number of authors in various fields of the humanities and social sciences have developed what they believed to be coherent systems based on this metaphor and used these to explain basic aspects and developments in the history of literature, philosophy, ethnology, anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, linguistics, sociology and even theology. These attempts are the more significant because they are intimately connected with fundamental debates concerning methodology in all domains of the arts and sciences and closely related to important trends toward psychological and sociological interpretations.

    In the Sources we distinguished between pseudo-perspective (non-homogeneous representations of space), proto- or empirical-perspective (early approximations of perspective), and technical use of linear perspective. In the case of metaphorical perspective. analogous distinctions are necessary between pseudo-metaphorical perspective (notions of viewpoint in unhomogeneous space), empirical metaphorical perspective (the emergence of an approximately accurate viewpoint) and metaphorical linear perspective (conscious, systematic use of viewpoints). By way of context we shall mention in passing some basic examples of pseudo- and empirical metaphorical perspective in literature. Our emphasis will be on the development of conscious metaphorical perspective, major authors who use the term in the titles of their works and specifically with regard to systematic methods. Since a search for every reference to viewpoint or perspective merely used in passing would expand the topic far beyond the bounds of this study, there will be no attempt at completeness as was the case with the sources.

2. Literature

    In literature, the origins of pseudo-metaphorical perspective in the sense of point of view are not clear. Among the earliest examples of looking at things from changing points of view, first from the earth and then with increasing distance from the heavens can be traced back to the fragments of a Babylonian poem. While the oldest surviving manuscript of this story comes from the library of King Assurbanipal (660-627 B.C.), it is linked with a fragment over a thousand years earlier (c. 1750 B.C.). In the poem, Etana, the father of the future king of the world attempts to bring a magic plant back from heaven. Schäfer (1974), who includes this text in an appendix, describes it vividly: "The eagle tells Etana to look down three times each time after a league’s ascent. Each time the world appears smaller. Thus after the first league the land mass and the ocean surrounding it are like an island in the river; the next time like a garden with a ditch around it; then in succession like a hut in a courtyard and a roll on a plate".

    Plato, in his literary theory, introduced a dichotomy between narrative (diègèsis) and drama (mimèsis) with epic poetry as an intermediate form (modus mixtus). Aristotle made a related distinction between epos (diègèsis) and drama (direct imitation ). These have formed a starting point for more recent distinctions among literary historians concerned with point of view theory (see Appendices 6-8). Kurth-Voigt (1974) argued that the principle of confronting different viewpoints in the sense of differing levels of knowledge became a basic theme in the dialogues of Plato, Cicero and Lucian and that these three authors provided: "diversified, at times highly controversial models for the art form of the dialogue and the presentation of various subject matter from multiple points of view". Hanfmann (1957) argued that the development of realism in Greek sculpture and painting affected the development of new narrative techniques in Greek literature: i.e. that the mastery of spatial viewpoints in art led their being used in literature. On the other hand, Gombrich (1960) suggested that the converse occured: namely that new narrative techniques in literature inspired the so called revolution in Greek art. Others have claimed that the Greek dialogues were rhetorically and logically constructed in such a way that they excluded the existence of personal viewpoints, let alone the comparison thereof. Auerbach (1945), for instance, in his great Mimesis, suggested that there was a fundamental distinction to be made between the one dimensional literature of the Greco-Roman tradition and the spatially much more realistic literature of the Judaeo-Christian tradition and if he be right then it was in this latter tradition that the notion of point of view in literature had its roots.

    De Folter (1983) claimed that the problem of reciprocity of perspectives went back to the Greek sceptical tradition founded by Pyrrho of Ellis. He noted, for instance, that the Greek verb from which scepticism derives, skeptomai (to look around, to spy, to observe), is etymologically linked the Latin verb, specio, (to see), which is one of the roots of the noun 'perspective'. It was no co-incidence, therefore, claimed de Folter, that sociologist-philosopher, Schutz (see below p. ), in his Problem of Relevance, should have dealt with Carneades of Cyrene, the founder of the third Academy, who introduced new elements into the sceptical tradition.

    Stempel (1972), claimed that the earliest concrete evidence for literary perspective—we would say empirical or proto metaphorical perspective—could be traced back to French literature in the twelfth century; that in the writings of Chrétien de Troyes (c.1135-1183), one found a deliberate mixture of indirect and direct speech which should be seen as a branch of perspective in the sense of point of view technique. Meanwhile, Kuhn (1949,1966,1973), placed these discussions in a larger European context, noting that the mediaeval courtly love poetry which evolved with the Provencal troubadours in the twelfth century spread throughout the whole of Europe and in Germany inspired a particular form of lyric love poetry (Minnesang). Kuhn was careful to insist that the mediaeval concept of objectivity was not to be equated with that introduced by Renaissance perspective. Nonetheless, he compared the courtly epics of Chrétien De Troyes with those of Hartmann von Aue (d. c.1210-1220), the first of the German courtly love poets; Wolfram von Eschenbach (c.1170-1220), the author of Parsifal; and Gottfried von Strassburg (fl. c.1200), the author of Tristan. In the case of Hartmann von Aue, he drew attention to a dialectic between the viewpoint in the opening stanzas of the poem and the main body of the poem. Green’s (1982), study of Wolfram’s Parsifal remains the most thorough examination thus far of these point of view techniques in mediaeval German literature.

    As we have noted earlier (see above p.27**ff.), this French connection with the origins of point of view in literature is the more interesting through parallels with art history. Saint Francis of Assisi, it will be recalled, received his name because of his relations with Provencale French culture, particularly in terms of their storytelling. It can therefore be no coincidence that it was precisely in the Franciscan tradition radiating from Assisi that a new approach to pictorial narrative emerged in which spatial aspects and subsequently perspective played a central role? Or that the advances in secular art in Italy were frequently linked with France, as in the cycle by Azzo in the old town hall (now Civic Museum) of San Gimignano (c. 1295-1300)? This was also reflected in the art of Simone Martini, whose predella of the altarpiece of Saint Louis of Toulouse Crowning Robert of Anjou (1317) was described by White (1957, 83) as "the first surviving example of the perspective grouping of several scenes about a clearly defined central axis" and whose later activities included a period at the court of Avignon. In Florence, the French courtly love poem, The Chatelaine of Vergi, was the inspiration for narrative scenes on the walls of the Palazzo Davanzati (Florence, 1395), on the occasion of the marriage of Francesco Tommaso Davizzi with Castelana degli Alberti, scenes which were among the first to use illusionistic treatments of architectural space somewhat systematically. Or one thinks of the frescoes in the Palazzo Trinci in Foligno (c. 1400-1450), with their French captions.

    In Italy, as Parronchi (1960), showed (see p. 43*), Dante made some of the earliest literary references to perspective in the sense of optics. Guillen (1968), noted that the metaphor of linear perspective evolved in sixteenth century Tuscany both in the cultured writing of a Giovan Maria Cecchi (1518-1587), and in popular carnival songs with stanzas such as the following:

If wealth, wisdom and faith are falsely rendered from the outside by colour, then he who believes in the clothing of those [deceivers] errs more than the others; for their langauge, intellect and heart are full of unpleasant traits and their being so pure and neat is but a sign of this; and it all derives solely from the fact that the whole world is done in perspective.

    Constance (1976), analysed how literary perspective in the sense of point of view evolved in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso; how the protagonist’s quest embroiled them in a complex play of masks and veils which multiplied the number of literary viewpoints and how this related to other examples of Renaissance romance notably Malory’s Le morte Darthur, and Spenser’s The faerie queene. Spenser’s use of literary perspective in The faerie queene was also outlined by Kamholtz (1980).

    It has been suggested that because protestantism made them so sceptical of visual images the English became champions of visual imagery in their literature, thus compensating for perspective in painting with literary perspective. Whatever the cause, the phenomenon emerged clearly in the last three decades of the sixteenth century. As Weimann (1970), noted these decades brought a volley of new literary forms: the euphemistic story (Lyly); courtly-gallant romance (Sidney), prose pastorale (Greene, Lodge), homely novel (Gascoigne), tradesmans’ romance (Deloney), picaresque genre (Nashe) and jest books. Of these, particularly the jest books introduced a new level of first person narrative and a more developed point of view. In a subsequent article, Weimann (1976), argued that the tensions between first person narrative and a represented point of view increased the gap between true meaning and fictive representation, thereby heightening the significance of both fiction and truth. Unfortunately he offered few examples.

    Kayser (1963), considered perspective in terms of different spatial relations between viewers and the stage, noting that in the Mediaeval period viewers walked around the stage whereas in the Renaissance they were limited to fixed seats. Pfister (1974), building on this and the ideas of Klotz (1969), Van Laan (1970), and Pütz (1970), produced a typology of Elizabethan and Jacobean comedies. Pfister claimed that drama potentially involved an interplay of two communication systems: one, interior in which the persons on stage communicated with one another directly; the other, exterior in which the author indirectly steered the reactions and interpretations of the audience. He then outlined three variants: an a-perspectival drama, a closed perspective structure and an open perspective structure. In the first of these an author makes no distinction between interior and exterior communication systems, such that the author’s thoughts and intentions are indistiguishable from the words of the figures on stage. Pfister suggested that this structure obtained in the early morality plays of the period.

    In a closed perspective structure the author consciously distinguishes between the two systems (inner and outer), and structures the play such that there is a growing discrepancy between the knowledge of the audience and the lesser knowledge of any of the figures on the stage. The knowledge which the audience gains is moreover clearly planned by the playwright to lead to fixed conclusions and in this sense is a closed perspective structure. This, Pfister claimed, obtained in Elizabethan comedies such as Jack juggler, Ralph roister doister and Grammar Gurton’s needle. By contrast, when the interplay between inner and outer communication systems is much richer, and no longer limited to a fixed conclusion, it entails an open perspective structure. This was the case in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Richard II, Julius Caesar; his problem plays such as Measure for Measure; a romance drama such as his Tempest and contemporary works such as The revenger’s tragedy, The white devil and Bussy D’Ambois.

    A quite different approach was taken by Gilman (1978), who was concerned with specific examples of perspectival images in English literature of this period. Gilman noted the development of anamorphic methods in painting and explored the spread of this curious perspective in England. He claimed that Shakespeare, particularly in Richard II, was concerned with perspectives of history, whereas in his comedies, Shakespeare aimed at a natural perspective. Gilman claimed that Donne, Herbert, and Greville explored a Pauline perspective, while Marvell developed a perspective of the mind.

    As the reader will have noticed there are really two stories that need to be told: one, how the authors themselves became conscious of the potentials of combining different viewpoints in writing their plays, poems and stories; the other, how critics became aware that viewpoints offered a powerful tool in analysing works of the past. It is important to remember that while the evidence cited above suggests that the first of these stories emerged in the twelfth century, the second of these stories did not begin until the latter half of the eighteenth century, and then quite specifically in Germany. Böckmann (1966), in a fundamental article has demonstrated that German authors of the latter eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries played a seminal role in developing this interest in metaphorical perspective as a tool for both the criticism of existing and production of new literature.

    Prior to Lessing, the German stage was dominated by a tradition that came from the Italian opera, either directly or via Paris, as Smart (1989) has shown, and emphasized the literal use of perspectival scenery. Lessing, according to Böckmann, applied what had been an external use of space to the interior world and developed a perspectivism of passions (Leidenschaften). For instance, in his Seventeenth letter on literature, Lessing asked how the German mind could utilize the possibilities of drama for itself and apply perspective to the basic principles of tragedy. Lessing’s search led him to re-interpret Shakespeare whose role he likened to that of a perspectival instrument: "If we have genius then Shakespeare must be that which the camera obscura is for the landscape painter: let him look carefully in it in order to learn how Nature projects itself onto a wall in all cases". Elsewhere Lessing articulated precisely wherein lay this new perspectival goal of the dramatist for which Shakespeare offered a model: "What then is perspective for a poet or an author? It lies therein that he sometimes interrupts the temporal sequence of events in which his imitation develops and goes to other periods in which the objects which he wishes to describe found themselves earlier, until he once again takes up the thread of his present temporal sequence".

    Böckmann has shown how Lessing’s perspectivism of passions was developed into a perspectivism of individualism and history by Herder in his Pages of German kind and art (1773); a perspectivism of art and life by Goethe in his Shakespeare and no end (1813-1816); a perspectivism of phantasy and dreams by Tieck in his Poet’s life and how Schlegel subsequently went on to make perspectivism a basic principle of Romantic art in his Lectures on dramatic art and literature. Renaissance authors had frequently compared sculpture and painting (paragone). Schlegel contrasted ancient sculpture and theatre with Romantic painting and literature:

Sculpture directs our attention exclusively to the group that has been represented, stripping it as much as possible from all its surrounding contexts.... By contrast, painting prefers to represent the principal figures and all the surrounding features thoroughly and to open up views into an endless distance in the background. Lighting and perspective are its actual magic. Hence the dramatic, particularly the tragic art of the ancients, destroys to a certain extent the surroundings of time and space, while the Romantic decorates its more complex pictures through the interplay thereof [i.e.space and time].

    This was clearly one of the starting points for the later nineteenth and twentieth century contrast between Ancient sculpture which was supposedly tactile and Renaissance painting which was supposedly visual—a distinction which Gombrich (1960), reviewed and challenged.

    Kayser (1954), related the development of a specific viewpoint with the rise of the modern novel in the eighteenth century. He pointed out that in 1740 there were 10 new novels a year in Germany, by 1770 this had risen to 100 and that by 1800 there were some 500 new novels each year (17):

This appears to us what is the particular and new in the narration of Cervantes, Fielding and Wieland: that a much more personal narrator emerges as intermediary, whose being is many sided; that the narrated story is placed in multiple perspectives and that the language thereby becomes buried; that the reader becomes drawn in and must remain attentive in order to grasp the buried meaning, such that notwithstanding all the surprises that the narrator allows himself with the reader, given a belief in nature, there is achieved a commonality of indication and considerate evaluation on both sides.

    Kayser argued that the crisis of the modern novel lay therein that this notion of a personal narrator had died, "as if the opacity of the world had become so strong and the question of meaning so unsolvable, that it was impossible to gain a proper survey through a more distant standpoint (namely that of the epic narrator)." It was as if it was only when the reader was drawn into the uncertainties of life that reality could be achieved.

    Other authors have explored an eighteenth century trend towards various literary viewpoints. Langen (1934), related the problem of viewpoints (Anschauungsformen) to different frames of reference (Rahmenschau) which evolved in late eighteenth century rationalism. Kurth-Voigt (1965), explored the use of viewpoints in W. E. Neugebauer’s German Don Quixote (1753), and in a book on Wieland (1974), where she examined both the philosophical (see below p. 166*) and the literary background, noting how Platonic dialogue had, via Cicero and Lucian, affected Erasmus’ Colloquies. Kurth-Voigt pointed to the significance of Erasmus’ Praise of folly, Brandt’s Ship of fools; Pope’s Essay on criticism, the third Earl of Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks of men, manners, opinions, times; the role of the epistolary novels by Richardson and Rousseau. Kurth-Voigt focussed on Wieland’s Don Sylvio (1764), and his Aurora and Cephalus (1765), making a larger claim that the: "omniscient narrator of the seventeenth century Romance is gradually replaced by a more personal, often ironic and even fictive third-person narrator who betrays a subjective point of view and frankly, inadvertently, admits the limits of his insights". Hence the same Wieland who wrote On a passage in Cicero concerning perspective in the works of Greek painters (1840, see above p. 38*), and whom Kayser associated with the rise of a systematic viewpoint crucial for the rise of the novel, was portrayed by Kurth Voigt as undermining that tradition with a subjectivizing trend.

    Dargan (1985), explored the relation of narrative perspective to authorial vision in works by Balzac, Louis Lambert (1832), Colonel Chabert (1832) the trilogy, Story of the thirteen (Histoire des treize, 1833-1835), and Eugénie Grandet (1839). In Louis Lambert, the narrator struggled unsuccessfully to integrate various forms of expression (14): "letters, philosophical tenets, and speculation, poetical myth and mimesis." By contrast the narrator of Colonel Chabert was more forceful in an integrating role (14): "Through a perspective that explores the relationship of many different levels of meaning, the novel explores linguistic ground beyond the mere recognition of the denotative relation of sign to referent". The trilogy, according to Dargan addressed "the problem of fragmented perspective; they relate stories in which chronology, or the rearrangement of it, requires obvious and concerted shifting of the narrator’s point of view". In Eugénie Grandet, the interest shifted (16): "away from the gradual resolution of an open conflict, such as Chabert’s personal war against society, towards the drama of discernment, through the narrator’s eyes, of hidden conflict, passion and the silent depths of experience".

    This emphasis on the subjective impressions of an individual was taken much further by James (1889), who in his letter to Deerfield Summerschool, urged:

Oh, do something from your own point of view....Any point of view is interesting that is a direct impression of life. You each have an impression colored by your individual conditions; make that into a picture framed by your own personal wisdom, your glimpse of the American world. I don’t think I really do know what you mean by materializing tendencies any more than I should by spiritualizing or etherealizing. There are no tendencies worth anything but to see the actual or the imaginative, which is just as visible, and to paint it.

    As Spencer (1971), pointed out, James and other great novelists of the late nineteenth century such as Flaubert, Turgenev and Conrad heightened the illusion of the novel as a closed entity by removing the overt presence of the author (55): "to give the impression of autonomous characters involved in dramatic, as opposed to narrated actions". The ways in which illusions of reality in a novel could be heightened by various narrative approaches were explored by Henry James in his prefaces to the New York edition of his works (1907-1909). These ideas were systematized and analysed in terms of technical possibilities by Lubbock, in The craft of fiction (1921), who claimed that: "The whole intricate question of method, in the craft of fiction, I take to be governed by the question of point of view -the question of the relation in which the narrator stands to the story". Lubbock, using an inductive approach, described this relation as a dichotomy of telling (picture) and showing (drama), within which there was a spectrum of four possibilities that ranged from panoramic survey and dramatized narrator to dramatized mind and scenic narration. Rather than being concerned with the character’s viewpoints in a novel, Lubbock’s attention was focussed on the relationship between narrator and material and this focus has continued to dominate the way point of view is used by various authors such as Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, who developed these techniques of changing perspective by limiting, expanding or contrasting viewpoints. Critics who have further explored these themes include Shipley’s Dictionary (1943); Carolyn Gordon and Alan Tate, in The house of fiction (1950), Leon Edel, in The modern psychological novel (1959), and Wayne C. Booth, in The rhetoric of fiction (1961). They use point of view as a basic tool of formal analysis in Anglo-American criticism. Pouillon (1947), in Time and the novel, also developed his vision theory which was one of the starting points for Lämmerts (1955, 70-73, 87 ff.), discussion of these themes in his Building forms of narrative, who significantly devoted only a few pages to the subject.

    Ortega y Gasset, in his essay On point of view of the arts (1947, English 1949), described history as an elaboration of cinema and argued that what moved or changed in painting was point of view; that the history of European painting could be seen as a shift from proximate to distant vision or as "a retraction from the object towards the subject, the painter" and hence painting (826): "which begins with Giotto as painting of bulk, turns into painting of hollow space". In this development he outlined seven stages: the Quattrocento, Renaissance, Transition, Chiaroscurists, Velazquez, Impressionism and Cubism. In this he saw a distinct evolution (834): "First things are painted; then sensations; finally ideas. This means that in the beginning the artist’s attention was fixed on external reality; then on the subjective; finally on the intrasubjective". Ortega y Gasset claimed that there was a strange parallelism in philosophy from the nominalists at the time of Giotto who believed in the reality of individual substances; then Descartes, with his emphasis on space; Leibniz with his monadic concept of viewpoints, and finally Husserl’s intersubjective realities of phenomenalism. His aim was primarily to draw attention to these striking parallels between art and philosophy and raise the question of where one could go from here. In another of his fundamental essays On the dehumanization of art (1947), Ortega y Gasset, drew attention to a problem that had also concerned Panofksy in a different context (see p. 239*), namely the objectification of the subjective:

if, in turning our back on alleged reality, we take the ideas for what they are -mere subjective patterns- and make them live as such...then we have dehumanized and, as it were, derealized them. For ideas are really unreal. To regard them as reality is an idealization, a candid falsification. On the other hand, making them live in their very unreality is, -let us express it in this way- realizing the unreal as such. In this way we do not move from the mind to the world. On the contrary, we give three-dimensional being to mere patterns, we objectify the subjective, we worldify the immanent.

Type Description Author

1.history of books any catalogue of writers or books Cave

2.intellectual history jurisprudence,mathematics,philosophy Bacon

3.history of nationalism tracing of national spirit,ideals Schlegel

4.sociological method political,social,economic causes Marxists

5.historical relativism enter into mind of past age Meinecke, Craig

6.internal history internal development in isolation Grierson

Fig. 40. Six types of literary history outlined by Wellek (1946,113).

    Wellek (1946), listed six types of literary history (fig. 40) and saw a need to avoid both false relativism and absolutism. For our purposes, this list is the more interesting because some of the categories clearly relate to methodological debates in other fields. For instance, five and six relate to debates of vertical and horizontal history among historians and debates of external vs. internal history among historians of science, who are also discovering the attractions of alternative four. Wellek’s solution was to adopt Ortega y Gasset’s concept of perspectivism (121): "we must be able to refer a work of art to the values of its own time and of all the periods subsequent to its own, convinced as we are that a work of art is both ‘eternal’ (that is preserves a certain identity) and ‘historical’ (that is passes through a process of development which can be traced)".

    This approach was developed by Wellek and Warren (1949), in their Theory of Literature,and formed a point of departure for Guillen (1968, 1971), whose deeply learned and subtle essay related historical developments in art and philosophy with those of literature. Spencer’s (1971), Space, Time and Structure in the Modern Novel, was another early attempt in English at synthesis on this topic. Spencer distinguished between closed and open structures. In a closed structure (26): "only one perspective is permitted as a point of view upon the subject", which gives the novel intensity and autonomy, there is often an emphasis on the extraordinary, characters may be ruthlessly subordinated to a theme. Open structures (52): "embody multiple perspectives, some of which are actually contradictory, whose purpose is to expose the subject from as many angles as possible-and ideally, with an impression of simultaneity". Spencer went on to discuss perspectives of the architectonic novel; perspective and narrative point of view; perspectives of the camera and perspectives provided by the book itself.

    In Hungary, Lukacs, a professor of aesthetics, gave perspective rather different meanings, claiming that it was characterized by three qualities:

First, something is described as a perspective by the fact that it does not yet exist. Were it to exist it would not be a perspective for the world which we create. Secondly, this perspective is not, however, a mere utopia, but rather.. the necessary consequence of an objective societal development, which expresses itself objectivally in poetic form in the development of a series of characters in given situations, and third: it is objective, but not fatalistic....it is the tendency in reality towards actualisation...through deeds and handlings.

    Perspectivism, in this sense is "directed towards the future" or a "plan for the future," a meaning which arose in the early nineteenth century, but which subsequently became particularly popular in communist countries in Eastern Europe. In Western Europe, attempts at systematization evolved to alarming complexity. Lubbock (1921), was clearly a starting point for Stanzel’s (1955), basic dichotomy between telling (berichtend, panoramatisch) and showing (darstellend, mimetisch), and probably for his three basic categories: authorial narrative situation (auktoriale Erzählsituation), I-narrative situation (Ich-Erzählsituation) and personal narrative situation (personale Erzählsituation). Friedman (1955, 1975), also began with Lubbock’s basic distinction between telling and showing which he then spanned with a spectrum of eight possibilities: editorial omniscience, I as witness, I as protagonist, multiple selective omniscience, selective omniscience, dramatic mode and camera. Dolozel (1967, 1973), according to Lintvelt, began with two basic narrative forms, the He-Form and the I form each of which was subdivided into objective, rhetorical and subjective to produce six basic categories of narrative, namely, three pertaining to the He form: objective, rhetorical, subjective and three pertaining to the I form: objective (i.e. of the observer), rhetorical, subjective (i.e. personal).

    Meanwhile, according to Lindemann (1987), Dolozel actually had eight categories.: first person active narrator; first person passive narrator; first person passive character; first person active character; third person active narrator; third person active character; third person passive character; third person passive narrator. An important article in French on "Point of view or narrative perspective", by Van Ressum-Guyon (1970), provided a survey of these developments.

    Leibfried (1970, 1972), used a combinatorial play of narrative characteristics. He started with two basic concepts: perspective narrative and grammatical form. Perspective narrative he defined as either internal, when the narrator participates in the action; or external, when the narrator plays no role in the story. Grammatical form was divided into a first person, I form (Ich-Form), and a third person He form (Er-Form). These were then combined to produce four alternatives: internal perspective with I form, internal perspective with He form, external perspective with I Form, and external perspective with He form. Füger (1972), used a similar combinatorial method with three basic categories: narrative position, depth of the perspective narrative and grammatical form. Narrative position he divided into external narrative position and internal narrative position. Depth of the perspective narrative was defined whether the centre of orientation had superior knowledge, adequate knowledge or inferior knowledge. In grammatical form he defined the first person (Ich-Form) and second person (Du-Form) as personal and the third person as impersonal (Er-Form). These were then combined to produce twelve alternatives (fig. 41).

External Superior Knowledge Personal grammatical form

Position Impersonal "

Adequate Knowledge Personal "

Impersonal "

Inferior Knowledge Personal "

Impersonal "

Internal Superior Knowledge Personal "

Position Impersonal "

Adequate Knowledge Personal "

Impersonal "

Inferior Knowledge Personal "

Impersonal "

Fig. 41. Twelve combinations of perspectival structure from Füger (1972).

    In Russia, inspired partly by Bakhtin, Uspensky,(1966, English translation 1970), published his Poetics of composition. The structure of the artistic text and typology of a compositional form.Uspensky identified four planes on which point of view could be analysed: ideological, phraseological, psychological, and spatial-temporal. The ideological plane he also called evaluative (8): "understanding by evaluation a general system for viewing the world conceptually". He described the phraseological level in terms of naming; correlation between the speech of the author and the speech of the characters in the text; the influence of someone else’s speech on authorial speech; the influence of authorial speech on someone else’s speech; internal and external authorial positions. In the spatial-temporal plane he considered the concurrence and non-concurrence of the spatial position of the narrator and a character; the sequential survey, bird’s eye view and silent scene. In terms of time he outlined multiple temporal positions as well as tense and aspect and the temporal position of the author. On the psychological plane Uspensky returned to his earlier distinction between internal and external to identify four different cases of authorial position in narration: 1) unchanging and consistently external; 2) unchanging and consistently internal; 3) changing in sequence; 4) changing with simultaneous use of different positions.

    Pfister (1974), whose important work on perspectival structures in Elizabethan plays has already been cited above, offered a concise summary of the various meanings of perspective among literary theorists:

The concept of perspective is used in the jargon of literary criticism as often and usually as imprecisely as the concept of structure. Both reveal themselves to be highly polyvalent in meaning and constantly require, if they are not to flow into the uncommitted and general, precision through definition. The concepts perspective and perspectivism appear in the most varied of contexts and with the most diverse of meanings. In the theory of literary history perspectivism refers to a scientific position which is as far removed from historical relativism as it is from unhistorical doctrinaire absolutism. In Marxist literary theory perspective refers to the progressive, anticipatory direction of works of socialist realism and frequently perspective is also merely used as a vague metaphor for a given viewpoint or interpretative approach, from which a work or a group of works is considered. Nonetheless, in the recent theory of the novel the concept of perspective has evolved to a generally acknowledged category of analysis of high heuristic value.

    Lanser (1981), developed a much more complex typology consisting of three basic elements: status, contact and stance. Status used Plato’s basic distinction between diegetic and mimetic as its starting point. Contact involved mode, attitude and identity of narratee. Stance subsumed Uspensky’s four planes: phraseological, spatial-temporal, psychological and ideological. Diegetic authority was then divided into authorization and social identity. Psychological was divided into information, focalization, attitude and expression. Ideological was divided into relation to culture, text and authority. Each of these categories was further subdivided partly on the basis of Chatman’s oppositions. For instance authorization was divided into authorial equivalence; representation (hetero- vs. auto-diegesis); privilege (limited vs. omniscient); reference (report vs. invention). There were thirty one further categories (Appendix 6). The full complexity of Lanser’s system only becomes apparent when it is realized that each of the basic oppositions can in turn be subdivided into an entire spectrum of distinctions. Hence, the opposition heterodeigenesis-autodiegenesis can be further subdivided into six variants: uninvolved narrator (no place in the story world); uninvolved eyewitness; witness participator; minor character; co-protagonist; sole protagonist.

    Lintvelt (1981), reviewed the majority of these developments and produced the most complex system to date. He began with a distinction between cases where the narrator does not enter into the story (narration heterodiégétique) and those in which the narrator is also the actor of the story (narration homodiégétique). The first of these he subdivided into three categories: authorial, actorial and neuter; the second of these he subdivided into authorial and actorial thus producing five basic categories. Each of these was then analysed in terms of four planes, namely, perceptual-psychic, temporal, spatial and verbal and further subdivided to create a system of labyrinthine complexity (Appendix 7).

    Lindemann (1987), surveyed these developments and produced a chart to make visible common aspects among various authors (Appendix 8). He also noted that this great proliferation of terms and methods had actually focussed on a relatively small section of potential literary experience, which he sought to clarify by a concept of three worlds, reality, fiction and represented world, arguing that literature was ultimately about all the relations in all three worlds and not just about fictive narrators and listeners (fig. 39).

III Represented World Agent Patient

II Fiction Fictive Narrator Fictive Listener

I Reality Author Reader

Fig. 42. Lindemann’s (1987,19) diagram to illustrate three worlds of literature in connection with his distinction between authorial and actorial narration.

    Implicit in these attempts at systematization, was an assumption that one could catalogue and classify the viewpoint of an individual. Kayser (1954), had argued that the disappearance of a clear narrative viewpoint signalled a crisis in the modern novel, intimating that the very concept of the individual was at stake. Guillen (1971), who saw the same problem, was more careful and raised the question what might happen next.

    One development has been increasing attention to multiple viewpoints using a variety of terms. Mandelkow (1960), and Kimpel (1967), referred to polyperspective. Stanzel (1964), in his Typical forms of the novel, spoke both of multiperspectival, and multiple perspective. Lange (1965), preferred many-perspectival; while Schmidt-Henkel (1965), used polyperspectivism. Neuhaus (1971), attempted to classify these developments in his Types of multiperspectival narrative.

    The rise of cinema has obviously played its part in the development of interest in multiple perspectives. We noted that Ortega y Gasset used the image of film to characterize developments in literary pointy of view. Spencer (1971), claimed that John Dos Passos "was among the first novelists to understand how the simulation of the camera could extend the range of the novel’s perspectives"; that his trilogy, U.S.A: The 42^nd Parallel; Nineteen nineteen and the big money (1930), employed two perspectives which were prose approximations of camera techniques, namely, the newsreel and the camera eye.

    Eisenstein (1957), claimed that "Language is much closer to film than to painting"; that montage is the structural principle of all the arts and took a radical position in a debate about the nature of montage, arguing that the participating elements should be varied "so that their combination provides contrast, conflict, tension and explosion", whereas others insisted that these elements should be similar to one another such that their ensemble resulted in an impression of harmony.

    Under the heading viewpoint, in the Dictionary of world literary terms, Shipley (1955), reported that critics see this concept as governing the method and character of a work. He distinguished between internal and external viewpoints and identified three kinds of internal viewpoint: where the story is told by the leading actor, a pretended autobiography; a first person story, which is told by a minor character or where the story is told by several characters, each taking a different part in the adventure. This he contrasted with the external or Olympian point of view in which a superior narrator views all the characters from an equal distance. The advantages and disadvantages of both methods were outlined and mention made of an alternative where a shifting view-point is used.

    While some authors, such as Guillen (1968), described Robbe-Grillet (1959, 1964), as (355): "one of the first important writers who has tried to separate seeing from knowing", Spencer (1971), claimed that (107-108): "since his novels actually evolve from a blended perspective that combines the subjective human view of the novelist with the objective, non-human view of the camera, his works provide some of the best available examples of how the novel may expand its powers by using the perspectives of the camera". The tremendous literary possibilities of cinema were very vividly described by Monique Nathan (1958):

Refusing all interpretative commentary, it [the novel] ought not to give one something to think about, but something to see. It exposes reality at a glance; it multiplies points of view; it varies appearances; it unmasks what no one sees, the underside, the upperside, the horizontal and the vertical, the inside and the outside, making the distant seem near-at hand and the near seem distant; it amplifies, in a word, all the variations of incident and the limited distances of the human visual field, and in so doing it amplifies the apprehension of the real.

    Hönnighausen (1976), saw the emergence of multiple viewpoints as part of a larger shift in philosophy and world views. He argued that this could be traced to the end of the nineteenth century which introduced a new positive view towards both lying and masks in the writings of Oscar Wilde and Friedrich Nietzsche. The demise of first person discourse and authorial narrative generally, which Kayser had bewailed, was now linked to the development of various narrative masks in James and related to the rise of relativistic criticism. James’ contemporary, Walter Pater, for instance, had asserted that: "the aim of right criticism is to place Winckelmann in an intellectual perspective of which Goethe is the foreground". Matthew Arnold and H. A. Taine had made similar assertions.

    Hönnighausen argued that this nexus of developments went much deeper; that it was bound up with tendencies to separate the sphere of art from the sphere of ethics; that the suppression of the narrator was linked with developments in criticism such as T.S. Eliot’s (1917), Tradition and the individual talent, whereby: "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality"; which according to Hönnighausen led to the New Criticism and its ahistorical approach to aesthetics. He claimed that in terms of literature the suppression of the narrator was linked with the emergence of multiple personalities in literature as in Stevenson’s, Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde,and Wilde’s, Picture of Dorian Gray, to whom "man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion"; which, claimed Hönnighausen, was ultimately the source of Pound’s Personae; concepts of transformation and cloaking in Barth’s (1960), Sot weed factor,and the impersonations in Pynchons’ V (1963).

    This fascination with masks should perhaps be linked with a growing attention to the experience of circus in semiotics; where students have become increasingly uncertain about where reality lies: on stage, where the circus members are clearly acting; off-stage when they are consciously letting themselves be interviewed and playing the part of circus performers; or in their everyday life when the magic of their profession is least in evidence. Masks have also become an increasingly dominant theme in the cinema with films such as Darkman and the Invisible Man.

    Meanwhile, Nathalie Sarraute (1956), took further the approach of multiple viewpoints with her technique of sub-conversation (sous-conversation) intended to explore: "the region of awareness that is conscious but consists of thoughts that have not yet been censored, edited, trimmed, or made respectable enough for use in actual speech"—a method which sounds suspiciously like the subsequent quests for sub-texts à la Derrida. In any case, these developments confirm that if the repression of a dominant narrator in modern literature involves the demise of a particular kind of static individualism, it appears also to herald new dynamic, polyvalent forms of individualism. Persons who answer calls on the cellular telephones while driving along highways in their automobiles or write reports on computer screens while flying in a jet, cannot be described with the same frameworks as a person who was born, lived and died on the same farm. In the most advanced technological societies these modes of communication are changing so fast that our rules of interaction, e.g. answering machines and even our concepts of sincerity are constantly being revised and we lack models because the rules keep changing.

    Among those who have studied the use of perspective in modern literature, most scholars have focussed on individual authors and texts beginning with a study by Wickardt (1933), on Dickens. However, it was not until the 1970’s, the very decade that saw a flowering of systematic theories of point of view theory, that this approach became a serious international trend. In English literature there was Ehlers’ (1977), work on Gothic fiction and a decade later, Hale’s (1987), study of perspective in Beckett. In German literature, there were studies by Schmidt-Brümmer (1971), on Fontana; Kurth-Voigt (1974), on Wieland; Sämmern-Frankenegg (1976), on Storm, and Kristiansen (1977), on Broch. In Russian literature, there was Imendörffer (1973), on Gorkij. In French literature, there was Dargan (1985), on Balzac (cf. fig. 43).

Author Works Scholar

Balzac Eugénie Grandet Dargan (1985)

Beckett Endgame, Rockaby Hale (1987)

Broch Death of Virgil Kristiansen (1977)

Dickens Pickwick Papers Wickardt (1933)

Donne Obsequies Gilman (1978)

Fontana Irrungen Wirrungen Schmidt-Brümmer (1971)

Gorkij Zizn Klima Samgina Imendörffer (1973)

Greville Caelica Gilman (1978)

Herbert The Elixir Gilman (1978)

Marvell Upon Appleton House Gilman (1978)

Shakespeare Richard II Pfister (1974), Gilman (1978)

Spenser Fairie Queene Constance (1976), Kamholtz (1980)

Storm Immensee Sammern-Frankenegg (1976)

Wieland Don Sylvio Kurth-Voigt (1974)

Fig. 43. Alphabetical list of some authors who have been studied in terms of literary perspective, and their works.

    A few thinkers have reflected on general issues relating to perspective in modern literature (and art), notably Alewyn (1957), Adorno (1958) and Jeziorkowski (1967). Two authors focussed specifically on space. Bachelard (1958), explored different kinds of space that attracted and concentrated the poetic imagination, notably, various aspects of the house and hut, drawers, chests, wardrobes, nests, shells and corners; questions of miniature spaces; of intimate immensity and the inherent interplay between outside and inside created by such spaces. McLuhan and Parker (1968), noted that, while Piaget had outlined the development of spatial concepts in children (3): "there has thus far been no guide to the changing spatial experience that adults typically encounter in poetry and painting". This quest led them to reconsider perspective (13):

Perspective itself is a mode of perception which in its very nature moves towards specialism and fragmentation. It insists on the single point of view (at least in its classical phase) and involves us automatically in a single space. Inasmuch as a three-dimensional space is a concomitant of one dimension in time, we find fragmentation developing in both space and time, and in both poetry and painting. Because of the insistence on single times and single spaces, the possibility of "self-expression" arises. In mannerism, this possibility manifests itself in an insouciant violation of the canons of proportion and color, and a realization of the potential inherent in a variety of visual spaces within a single visual space- fragmentation within set parameters.

    In McLuhan’s analysis, this perspectival space, which he also linked with neutral Newtonian space, was replaced by the rise of formal space through both Seurat’s painting and Hopkin’s poetry. Abstract art, he claimed, could be seen as an internalization of visual space (28): "Whereas in the Renaissance it was the encounter with the new pictorial or visual space that created discomfort and dismay, the reverse is true in our time. It is the rediscovery of non-visual, multi-sensuous spaces that bothers and confuses us". Throughout his book, McLuhan stressed the peculiar characteristics of the visual sense (221): "In cultures that give much less stress to the visual sense, ‘rational’ connectedness exercises much less authority" or (249): "The visual sense alone of all our senses, creates the forms of space and time that are uniform, continuous and connected. Euclidean space is the prerogative of visual and literate man. With the advent of electric circuitry and the instant movement of information, Euclidean space recedes and the non-Euclidean geometries emerge".

    According to McLuhan the electronic age brought a return to a non-visual society, which entailed (250): "the dropping not only of representation but also of the story line. In poetry, in the novel, in the movie, narrative continuity has yielded to thematic variation". He returned to this theme a few pages later (254): "Visual orientation has simply become irrelevant".

    While many of McLuhan’s claims in terms of the effects of these new technologies have with hindsight acquired a prophetic quality, his fundamental claims about the rejection of the visual sense, representation and narrative in electronic culture are very much open to debate. Even if we acept his analysis (266-267) that television involves tactile rather than visual perception, it is striking how the electronic technologies created new spatial worlds not just on television and computer screens but equally in the cinema. Perspective which was once a matter of textbooks has now been integrated into both CAD programs and popular drawing packages. Some of these even allow one to transform a scene from linear to spherical perspective. These technologies also removed what were once clear boundaries between different media such as photographs, slides, images on a computer screen and printed images. If authors are now reading their texts on computer screens rather than on printed pages, this does not mean that they are less visual. Vision and perspective may have new guises, but they are more central than ever to modern culture.

    In the context of philosophy and history of science, we noted that Cassirer (1910), in his Structure and Function, traced a shift from an emphasis on substance in antiquity to relations in the early modern period. In the context of the history of literature, Jaap (1980), explored a similar shift in his Relational meaning (Beziehungssinn. Ein Konzept der Literaturgeschichte). Cassirer was one of Jaap’s points of departure, as was Nietzsche’s question: "Is not meaning, that is relational meaning and perspective necessary?" This concept was more complex than it appeared at a first glance (13):

Hence relational meaning involves something completely different than simply speaking of relations. Hence it is not just a losing oneself in anything at will (in relativism), but rather a discursive principle of constituting meaning, which we describe as relational reflection. The meaning that concerns us here is that of literature and history as history of literature. Thus the answer to our questions can be reduced to a shortest formula: the history of literature is the history of relational meaning.

    Jaap’s basic claim was that the metaphysical claims for the truth of literature which had been articulated from the time of Aristotle through to the nineteenth century were outmoded and had to be avoided. To achieve this it was not a question of abandoning the history of literature but rather of historicizing them. Visions of the whole were no longer to be sought, instead one needed attention to the parts and the relationships between them. He argued that images of a continuous line of thought and tradition needed to be replaced by a view of historical discontinuities whereby there were important jumps from one period to the next; indeed that the history of literature could be seen as a history of crises in and of meaning. While the notion of truth was to be replaced by a history of images of truth (Wahrheitsfiguren), this was not to say that these images were merely random. Their choice was closely linked with rules of logic, ethics and aesthetics. Admittedly, they were interpreted rules, but this interpretation was itself an element and result of a combinatorial process, which changed in the course of history. In Jaap’s view, literature and history were inextricably linked through changing relations or perspectives.

    Perron, Gordon and Danesi (1994) argued that commonplaces, in the sense of locus communis, (3):"generally entail a subjectivized perspective that reveals a deeply embedded need to literally externalize the subject's feelings by bringing the interlocutor into the subject's domain of experience." According to the authors (3): "Commonplaces constitute evidence in favor of the view that verbal communication is not a script based, disembodied, information transferprocess. SF [situational focusing], like other 'creative' discourse phenomena, leads us to believe, on the contrary, that verbal communication is hardly ever a neutral, information transfer act." They claimed that work in cognitive science by communications engineers and artificial intelligence researchers had (4):

rekindled what is perhaps the oldest debate in philosophy: Is 'meaning'a derivative of individual experience (the experientialist perspective)? or is it 'out there', waiting for the innate machinery of the mind to capture and store it independently of bodily processes and individual feelings (the literalist/objectivist perspective)?

    In conclusion, the authors suggested that subjectivized commonplaces seemed (7) "to show that ego dynamics are at the basis of human cognition. Like in a novel where the author's feelings and perspective shape the form and contents of the storyline, so too SF is one of the means by which the 'author' of an utterance reveals his or her feelings and perspectives in an artful manner." They noted how their approach differed from that of Lakoff, Langmacher and other experientialists but made no mention of the many authors cited in the foregoing pages. In a world where so much has been written there is an ever greater danger of re-inventing the wheel.

    The above all too summary treatment gives some idea of how pervasive has been interest among historians of literature in metaphorical applications of perspective, particularly in terms of viewpoint theory and levels of discourse. To a certain extent this work dovetails directly with work on the history of scenography considered elsewhere (see above p. 108-112*). Even so it is important to note that there is still much more to be known about the complex interplays among perspective and narrative in literature and painting. There is, for instance, a very interesting etymological history that deserves to be written for the figurative use of terms such as prospect, perspective and perspectives in major languages. For our purposes it will be enough merely to outline a few notes in terms of their appearance in book titles. In English, the use of prospect in a political sense emerged shortly after the Restoration in 1664 with a book entitled, A prospect of Hungary and Transylvania, followed by, A prospect of government in Europe (1681), and a Prospect of the state of Ireland (1682). In Germany, there was one seventeenth century title, A Prospect of the entire globe (Prospect des gantzen Erdkreises, 1686). In England, there were at least seven titles in the eighteenth century, and it then died out, although the literal sense, as in A prospect from Malvern Hill (1829) continued. In Italy, by contrast,there were but two eighteenth century titles (1752, 1761), with at least twenty titles in the first half of the nineteenth century (e.g.1802, 1804, 1806, 1808, 1811, 1813 1813 etc.), and a marked decline with only seven titles in the latter half of the century (e.g. 1855,1868,1878,1886 and 1890).

    Among the early Italian titles was Angelo Ridolfi’s (1818), Prospect of German literature (Prospetto della letteratura tedesca). In the twentieth century, this image shifted from prospect to perspectives. Hence there were Perspectives of French literature (Prospettive della letteratura francese, 1946), and Perspectives of English literature (1947). One of the earliest uses of perspectives (Prospettive) in Italy was for the name of a journal (1939). During and immediately after the war the term was used in an economic context: Economic perspectives of a new Europe (1940) and Economic perspectives of peace (1945). In the 1950’s perspectives occured in at least 6 titles. In these years the scope of the term increased dramatically. It was applied to pedagogy (1957), culture (1959), sociology (1959), communism (1960), history (1960) and philosophy (1964). So too did the number of titles. From 1960-1963 there were a further eight titles. In 1964 alone there were at least eight more. From the mid 1960’s onwards the metaphor of perspectives was universally applied. How these developments varied in different countries would require a major study in itself.

    Just as there are historians of art who claim that perspective died in the twentieth century there are historians of literature who act as if the same applied in their field. So-called Post-Modernists, for example, have been troubled by all attempts at separating subject and object, nature and nurture and have made it part of their agenda to conflate such oppositions. In the process, they deny the validity of individual viewpoints because they are supposedly biased. The Deconstructionists take this approach even further when they emphasize the pitfalls of subjectivity to such an extent that any viewpoint at all seems hopeless.

    It may be no co-incidence that members of the deconstructionist school (e.g. Liotard, Lacan, Jameson) are committed to a privileging of the now, to the extent that, not only are the historical roots of a subject frequently ignored, but the very term has a negative connotation. To say: "It’s history " is to dismiss something as "no longer important", "no longer a threat", finished, forgettable. Ironically, it is precisely this attitude of emphasizing the ephemeral, the ephemeroptera as Leonard flightily calls them, that this school removes the possiblity of having the evidence of other standards by which to weigh and balance the modes and fashions of contemporary subjectivity. In destroying the viewpoints of the past, other viewpoints, they condemn themselves to the subjectivity that they lament in others.

    It is instructive that the emerging field of Cultural Studies has not failed to notice some of these dangers. Their basic insight is that even though we admit that a voice is biased and limited this does not mean the voice should not be heard; that it is not significant or perhaps even important. Hence, whereas the deconstructionists are bent on our being so aware of our subjectivity that we dare not say anything, even about the irony that they as deconstructionists are happily carrying on saying what we cannot say; the proponents of cultural studies would argue that being biased is not an insuperable problem as long as we are honest about what this is and as long as we do not stop other persons from expressing their biases freely. Only some members of this school talk about different perspectives. Others use auditory terms rather than visual images, referring to voices (marxist, feminist, queer, black) or more general terms (class, race, gender, generation), instead of viewpoints.

    As with the de-constructionists there is a tendency to emphasize the now to the extent that the historical roots of their ideas are frequently overlooked or rather not known. Names such as Adorno, Nietzsche, Hegel and Kant hover amidst philosophical movements as clouds in a mountain range. Some acknowledge roots in the Russian structuralism and the Culturology movement of the 1930’s, the Frankfurt School, Birmingham, the Deconstructionists in Paris (fig. 44) or the Kameritu Centre in Kenya. Some emphasize the role of performance of acts, performative acts, the role of theatre and dance as well as activism, in a critique of traditional scholarhip which strives for a certain distance, to be removed from the everyday hurlyburly, in order to achieve a reflective state. Often it is forgotten that this view of scholarship as both reflective and active was espoused by earlier scholars such as Alexander von Humboldt who, along with his colleagues, resigned from the university when a colleague was wrongfully dismissed, led to his re-instatement and thus established the principle of tenure in the 1840’s. Even so one senses that cultural studies could implicitly accept the methods that have been developed by other branches of literature studying perspective. So a new synthesis could be expected.

Moscow Futurism (Florensky, Shegin)

Structuralism (Bakhtin)

Culturology

Prague Structuralism (Jakobson)

Paris Annales School (Braudel)

Structuralism (Levi Strauss)

Post Structuralism, De-Constructionism (Foucault, Derrida)

Post-Post Structuralism, Post-Modernism (Lacan, Liotard, Beaudrillard))

New Haven (Yale) Structuralism (Bloom)

Psychoanalysis applied to History of Art (Blatt)

Birmingham Cultural Studies (McNeill)

Fig. 44. One outline of some of the influences leading to Cultural Studies from the 1920’s to the 1990’s.

3. Philosophy

    Kurth-Voigt (1974), traced the origins of (pseudo-) metaphorical perspective in the sense of point of view back to the Socratic dialogue made famous by Plato and developed by Lucan. This view was impicitly challenged by both Auerbach (1945), and Polka (198*), who noted that Greek dialogue was fundamentally different from the balanced interplay of two points of view that we associate with modern dialogue. Instead the Socratic method was concerned with a systematic destruction of other persons’ points of view, such that what seemed an open conversation between equals was actually an a priori trap whereby the protagonist gradually eliminated other views and replaced them by a single, closed position. This claim has interesting parallels to the pseudo-perspective of the Greco-Roman art, where a series of positions were conflated together, rather than involving an individual viewpoint.

    Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that de Folter traces the concept of reciprocity of perspectives (cf. below p. 205*) has its roots in the Greek sceptical tradition founded by Pyrrho of Elis. Etymologically the word "skepsis" is related to the Greek verb "skeptomai" (to look around, spy, oberve) and with the Latin verb "specio" (to see) which underlies the words "perspicere"and "perspectiva" (perspective). According to Giannaras (1969), the Sceptics were the first to recognize the perspectival character of knowledge. Hence, de Folter (1983), has claimed that it is no co-incidence that Schutz should deal with the sceptic Carneades of Cyrene, in his Problem of Relevance.

    We would suggest that the developments of the dialogue form as they emerged in scholasticism from the twelfth century onwards might be seen as as a metaphorical version of proto- or empirical perspective. On the surface, the dialogues of Abelard, Peter Lombard and their successors are merely protracted versions of the Socratic technique, where the argument is slowly manouevred in favour of one position. On closer study, however, fundamental differences become apparent. Whereas the Greco-Roman tradition effectively produced monologues in the guise of dialogues, mediaeval disputations in dialogue form gave increasing independence to the interlocutors to the extent that it was not always clear who had actually won. And whereas the purpose of Greek dialogues lay solely in the domination of one position, mediaeval disputations were more concerned with testing the validity and strength of contesting viewpoints without always claiming to know which was ultimately right. This marked a significant step toward the ideal of Oxbridge debating clubs where individuals were trained consciously to defend either side of an argument: where what counted was the consistency of the viewpoint that was developed and it was assumed that this was something that was independent of the individual person, just as in linear perspective it was assumed that if someone else stood at the same viewpoint they would see that which the other person had seen.

    If we be right there were parallels between technical and metaphorical developments of perspective, between developments in art and those in literature, philosophy and other fields. Hence the shift from proto-perspectival viewpoints in painting at the time of Giotto to the ever more frequent use of linear perspective in the generations following Brunelleschi, was paralleled by a shift from approximate viewpoints in discourse to the development of conversation as an art in which no single person was meant to dominate the other. Some scholars would of course react strongly against these suggestions, claiming that it was precisely this quest to see parallels between different fields of human endeavour, coupled with a (neo-Hegelian) type of evolutionary reasoning that prepared the way for the totalitarian horrors of the 1930’s. To which we would reply that distinctions clearly need to be maintained between forms of thought and their contents. Inevitability and the fatal side of totalitarianism only enters when these categories are conflated and one destroys all opposing viewpoints. By contrast, our concern is to explore how philosophers increasingly became aware of the need to include other viewpoints as a basic dimension of the search for truth, without necessarily subscribing to the complete relativism of multiculturalists in the contemporary American sense (cf. above p. 8*).

    Boehm (1969), has claimed that Witelo’s concept of perspectiva (optics) and Nicholas of Cusa’s paradigmatic figure of triangles marked two important impulses towards perspective in late mediaeval thought and indeed that there were several aspects of Cusa’s metaphysics that were linked with concepts of perspectivity. According to Boehm, the writings of Montaigne were also important philosophical expressions of perspectival ideas in literary form. According to Smith (1981) the mediaeval optical tradition which included Alhazen, Grosseteste, Peckham and Witelo, was linked with theories of knowledge.

    The first systematic demonstration of the general principles of perspective occured in Paris with Desargues (1636), and it is striking that one of the first mentions of perspective in a philosophical context occured in the same city. For Pascal, in the Thoughts (c. 1658-1663, 381; Part 1, art.6, "Feebleness of man"), perspective was limited to art: "if one is too young one does not judge well; if too old, likewise....Thus panels seen from too far and from too close. And there is but one indivisible point which is the true place. The others are too close, too far, too high or too low. Perspective assigns it in the art of painting. But in truth and morals who will assign it?"

    His younger contemporary, La Rochefoucault (1665), in the Moral Maxims,observed that: "Men and their affairs have their point of perspective: there are those which one must see from close by to judge, and others of which one never judges so well as when one is far away". This idea he pursued in his Diverse Reflections (1678): "Just as one needs to maintain distance in order to see objects, one needs to do the same for society: each has its point of view from which it wants to be seen. One is usually right not to wish to be lighted from too nearby and there is scarcely anyone who wishes in everything to let themself be seen as they are".

    The philosopher, Leibniz (1646-1716), who also wrote on linear perspective, used metaphorical images of perspective throughout his writings. Between 1668 and 1671, he developed the idea: "that the soul is like a mathematical point-i.e. non-extensive - on which all perceptions converge as perspective lines do on a point of view". In his Théodicée, Leibniz (1710), drew on analogies with anamorphosis to claim that apparent disorder in the universe could be corrected by a different viewpoint:

It is as in those inventions of perspective, where certain beautiful drawings only appear confused until one brings them back to their true point of view and observes them using a certain lens or a mirror. It is in placing them and in using them as one should that they become the ornament of a cabinet. Thus the apparent deformities of our little worlds are united in the beauties of the large world and have nothing which opposes itself to the unity of a principle that is infinitely perfect.

    He also used the example of conic sections to illustrate his principle of how relations between perceiver and perceived could be different and simultaneously truthful:

Projections of perspective which in the circle come from conic sections, let us see that a same circle can be represented by an ellipse, a parabola and by a hyperbola and even by another circle, a straight line and a point. Nothing appears so different, so unalike as these shapes and yet there is a precise relationship from each point to each point. In like manner one needs to admit that each soul represents the universe according to its own point of view and by a rapport which is proper to it but a perfect harmony always subsists.

    In Leibniz’ (c. 1714), Monadology, this individual being became the monad which was also governed by perspective:

Just as the same city regarded from different sides offers quite different aspects, and thus appears multiplied by the perspective, so also it happens that the infinite multitude of simple substances creates the appearance of as many universes. Yet they are but perspectives of a single universe, varied according to the points of view, which vary in each monad. This is the means of obtaining the greatest possible variety, together with the greatest possible order; in other words, it is the means of obtaining as much perfection as possible. Only by this hypothesis (which I dare to call demonstrated) can the greatness of God be exalted as it ought to be.

    Hence for Leibniz the infinity of perspectives were a sign both of God’s pre-established harmony and a proof of God’s greatness. Leibniz proved a starting point for a number of later commentators. One was Litt (1926, see below) who saw Leibniz as a first step towards the ideas of Shaftesbury and Herder. Kaulbach (1968), examined the development of Leibniz’ concept of the standpoint particularly in relation to the idea of subjectivity as independence. Nieraad (1970), studied Leibniz in relation to Standpoint-consciousness and world connections. Schneiders (1971), considered "Leibniz’ double standpoint", one absolute and the domain of God, the other relative and the realm of humans. One of Schneider’s points of departure was how Leibniz treated knowledge (Erkenntnislehre) as a problem of standpoints. The absolute standpoint was a way of understanding the mysteries of religion that pointed to God.

    Meanwhile, as Kurth-Voigt (1974), noted (see above p. 155*), the empiricist school was providing more secular incentives for perspective in the sense of viewpoints. Gassendi, citing the ancient philosopher Epicurus, had claimed: "Nothing is in the intellect that was not previously in the sense", an idea usually associated with the Aristotelian tradition. Locke (1632-1704), developed this approach by emphasizing the role of experience. Since this differed from person to person, it followed implicitly that there were potentially as many viewpoints as there were persons. Locke’s most avid champion in England, Joseph Addison (1672-1719), pursued these ideas in an article on the "Pleasures of the Imagination": "Our sight is the most perfect and the most delightful of all our senses. It fills the mind with its objects at the greatest distance and continues the longest in action without being tired or satiated with its proper enjoyments".

    Addison’s conclusion that we cannot "have a single image that did not make its first entrance through the sight" was a paraphrase of Epicurus. By implication sight was now a key to both the imagination and different viewpoints. And there was a connection between the sceptical empiricism of Hume (1711-1776), and his subtle treatment of different points of view in the Dialogues concerning natural religion, where the persona was to "deliver the sentiments of sects that naturally form themselves in the world and entertain different ideas of human happiness." Indeed, Kurth-Voigt (1974), claimed that Hume’s aim was "to have each speaker offer from his point of view the perspective he represents in the complex realm of philosophy".

    It was in Germany, however, where the metaphor of perspective gradually acquired an important role in discussions of method. Johann Martin Chladni (Chladenius, 1710-1759), a professor of church history and later professor of theology at Wittemberg, was one of the first to expressly discuss the metaphor of perspective in terms of systematic method in his Introduction to Correct Explanation of Good Speech and Writing (1742):

Those circumstances of our soul, body and our whole person which make or are the cause that we suppose a thing to be so and not otherwise, we wish to name the see-point (Sehe-Punkt). Namely, just as the position of our eye and in particular, its distance from an object is the cause that we receive such an image and no other, so too is there with all our conceptions, a reason why we should recognize a matter so and not otherwise and this is the see-point of the same matter.

    Chladni became an important writer on the theory of history, mainly through his General Science of History (1752), in which he specifically acknowledged Leibniz as one of the early users of the perspective metaphor:

The see-point is the inner and the outer condition of the observer, insomuch as there flows therefrom a given and particular way of looking at and observing the things that came before one. This is a concept that goes together with the most important concepts of the whole of philosophy, but which one is not yet accustomed to employ usefully, except that Leibniz used it here and there in his metaphysics and psychology. However, in historical knowledge almost everything depends upon it.

    Meanwhile, Christian August Crusius (1715-1775), professor of philosophy and theology at Leipzig and Meissen, had explored the perspective metaphor as a way " to explain the difficulties that persons do not sufficiently understand," in his Way to the Certainty and Reliability of Human Knowledge (1747), where he too used the phrase see-point:

Now when persons wish to share such concepts with one another then it is unavoidable that each person in terms of the concepts with which they are already familiar, because of the different approach, needs to see the matter to a certain extent with different eyes and so to speak from a different see-point

    For Crusius, this see-point or viewpoint became synonymous with a method for explanation or interpretation, which arose as he put it: from a comparison of all the circumstances to determine the correct see-point from which the author has seen a matter and place oneself in the thoughts of the same."

    It was particularly through through various strands of the idealist school that this metyaphor of perspective was developed in a philosphical context. Kant (1724-1804), in the introductory section to his Critique of judgement (1781), formulated the concept of a ground (Boden), which served as a point of departure for both objective and subjective positions. Hence, when in modern English we speak of the grounds of an argument, we usually refer to the basis for another person’s (often opposing) viewpoint. This idea he developed more explicitly five years later in his essay, What does it mean to orientate oneself in thinking? (October 1786), in which he articulated his notion of a standpoint (Standpunkt). Orientation, claimed Kant, begins quite simply with a geographical orientation. In an everyday situation a person looks around to discover where they stand with respect to up and down and the four directions, North, South, East and West. This method of geographical orientation, he claimed, could be extended to dark rooms, i.e. situations where the eye cannot see surrounding objects, but again uses up-down, and the points of the compass to determine where they stand. This idea he developed: "Ultimately I can extend this concept even further such that he would then be in a position not only to orientate himself simply in space, i.e. mathematically, but also in thinking, i.e. logically". (It is useful to recall that Kant’s essay on orientation in space was one of the starting points for Cassirer’s discussion of space in his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,1923-1929, 1955, vol.2, p. 93). Meanwhile, four years later, Kant returned to this problem in his Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790):

Under the common sense one must, however, understand the idea of a social sense, that is a capacity for judgment, which in its reflection takes into account, (a priori) the modes of presentation of every other person, in order to hold one's view equally concerning the whole of human reason, and thereby to avoid the illusion which arises from subjective, private circumstances that could easily be held as objective and which would have a negative influence on one's judgement. Now this occurs because one's judgement of another person exists not only out of actual but much more out of possible judgements and one puts oneself into the position of the other [person], in order that one can abstract from the limitations which may by chance happen to adhere to our judgement:

    As Blankenburg (1991,3) has noted, Kant's transcendental view, when transposed to the sphere of everyday experience, readily lends itself to the concept of perspectival exchange. Indeed the notion of putting oneself into the place of another person, "standing in their shoes", has become a basic aspect of modern discussions.

    Litt (1926), in his Modern Ethics, noted the contribution of Herder (****) to the metaphor of perspective in philosophy:

When Herder formulated the famous phrase, that each nation had the middlepoint of its own happiness-- and for the disciples of Shaftsbury and Leibniz this coincides with manners, in itself, just as every sphere has its centre of gravity, so he fulfills that which was prepared by Leibniz' concept of the perspectivism of the monadic world view, without being able to be developed within the framework of his system.

    Hegel (1770-1831), in his Phenomenology of the spirit, pursued the idea of a standpoint (Standpunkt). In terms of the standard reference works it is noteworthy that Zedler (1732-) in his Universal lexicon had entries for the terms eye-point (Augen-Punkt), principal point (Haupt-Punkt) and standpoint (Standpunkt), but no figurative meanings for these. Adelung, in his Attempt at a complete grammatical critical dictionary (1774-1781), included figurative uses of viewpoint (Gesichtspunkt) and standpoint (Standpunkt). The brothers Grimm (1897), in their etymological dictionary traced the figurative use of the term viewpoint (Gesichtspunkt) through Leibniz, Gellert, Lessing, and Möser and also used the term horizon (Horizont) figuratively.

    According to Ferrator Mora (1958), it was Gustav Teichmüller, a professor of philosophy at the University of Dorpat, who first coined the term perspectivism in The real and the apparent world. A new foundation of metaphysics (1882). Teichmüller was very conscious of giving a new meaning to the traditional term of perspective as becomes clear from the following passage (185):

Now if we stood on the sun, the Copernican world view would be apparent to us. Since we stand on the earth the Ptolemaic version is apparent to us. If we stood on Venus or Jupiter we would on each occasion gain a different perspectival view of the world. The mouse cries when it is caught by the cat. The cat, however, is very happy about it. When the progressive party praises a bill, the conservatives are dismayed and conversely. In short, the view of things is always taken from a given standpoint and is therefore perspectival.

Now we know that our opinions, views or concepts are not the true things themselves, but rather that reality shows itself only in the elements of sense, that is in the so-called, sensations, by means of which something corresponding to the real things or events is unleashed within us. Hence all opinions or views of real things are only hypotheses used to explain our own situation. As a result the concept of perspective can no longer be used to describe the relation of the real thing as an object to the viewpoint of the subject, since real things do not exist for us until have already used them hypothetically as an explanation of our sensations. It therefore but remains for us to take the multitude of sensations themselves as the object, and explain its composition by the subject as the perspectival image. This more refined definition of perspective will meet with no opposition since such a composition of our sensations brings the reception and view of the real world, which nonetheless is only held to be a perspectival image by all scientific researchers.

    Teichmüller considered the major contending philosophical systems and concluded: "Hence we place idealism in a row with materialism and Spinozism and declare all these world views as perspectival since they allow us to enter into the world view such as it appears from our standpoint". His system was remarkable for a number of reasons. One of its points of departure was the concept of being (Sein as well the seiende) in relation to consciousness, themes that Husserl would take up a generation later. Teichmüller drew consciously on Eastern religions, notably Buddhism. He saw his system as based on ontology, from which Nature Philosophy (Naturphilosophie) derived and from which, under the title of phenomenology, the perspectival categories were produced. In this view space, time and motion were perspectival.

    Teichmüller’s book was one of the sources of Nietzsche (1844-1900), began with the notion of perspective as visual illusion, and ever changing appearances which led him to assert, in his Joyful wisdom (1882): "It is we who think and feel, who actually and unceasingly make something which did not exist before: the whole eternally increasing world of valuations, colours, weights, perspectives, gradations, affirmations and negations....One must admit this much: there can be no life at all except on the basis of perspectival estimations and appearances". Elsewhere in the same book Nietzsche noted:

How far the perspective character of the existence extends or whether it has any character at all, whether an existence without explanation, without sense does not just become nonsense, whether on the other hand, all existence is not essentially an explaining existence-these questions as is right and proper, cannot be determined by the most diligent and severely conscientious analysis and self-examination of the intellect, because in this analysis the human intellect cannot avoid seeing itself in its perspective forms and only in them.

    Nietzsche expressed a similar opinion in *** (1885):" In short we achieve an estimate, also for the not knowing, for the rough and the seeing roughly, the simplified and false, the perspectival." That same year he also referred to "the perspectival, the foundation (Grundbedingung) of all life" in the preface of his Beyond good and evil (1885). In the next three years his ideas slowly clarified. In a fragment written between the end of 1886 and the spring of 1887, Nietzsche claimed: "To the extent that the word knowledge is meaningful, the world is knowable: but its meaning is variable. It has no [inherent] meaning behind it, but countless meanings, perspectivism."

    In The genealogy of morals (1887), Nietzsche restated this idea even more forcefully: "There is only a seeing from a perspective, and the more emotions we express over a thing, the more eyes, different eyes we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘idea’ of that thing, our ‘objectivity’ ". In the spring of 1888 he went on to claim that there is a "perspective-setting force" from which "every centre of force and not just a person, going out from oneself, constructs the whole of the remaining world." As Guillen pointed out, Nietzsche’s perspectivism also went in the direction of pragmatism; that perspectives were vehicles of biological and vital impulses (Triebe) which work within the limits and needs of each being: "Perspectivism is only a complex form of specificity. My conception is that each specific body strives in the direction of being master of the complete space and to use his force (his will to power)". Hence perspectivism in this sense was much more than a figure of speech or even a personal view point. It related to non-conscious, collective needs and involved what Guillen has termed an ultrapersonal point of view; biologically based and utilitarian in its aim. Meanwhile, Litt, who was critical of trends toward relation in sociology (see p.*** below), offered a brief assessment of Nietzsche's contribution:

That perspectivism of looking at the world and norming of life, in which Nietzsche believed he had found the most sublime expression of the drive to power, does not exclude ideal, fundamental principles of knowledge and formation, but rather includes them. Were it otherwise, then it would not be view and will led formation but rather blind going forth, that would improperly being laying claim to spiritual action.

    The twentieth century saw an enormous rise in the philosphical use of perspective meatphors. For instance, Hartmann (1909), writing On Method in the History of Philosophy, claimed that "all factual things first require viewpoints."

    The year 1912 saw the appearance of three significant books on philosophical aspects of perspective by Gehler, Petzoldt and Pollack. The most complex of these was by Gehler entitled, The apparent image. A philosophical-perspectival study. Apparent world and real world. The foundation of a new critical-philosophical world view. Together with a critical explanation of Kantian criticism. This was the same Gehler whose debates with Hauck concerning spherical perspective were discussed earlier (p. 123), and indeed a large section of this book continued a polemical attack on Hauck and his followers. Gehler saw his deeper purpose in creating a philosophical approach that improved on Kant. Knowledge, claimed Gehler (137), involved three worlds: an apparent world (Erscheinungswelt), the shape of which was certainly recognizable and dependent upon the kind of reception of external stimuli on the organ of vision; a real world (wirkliche Welt), which was ultimately unknowable, corresponding to Kant’s thing in itself (Ding an sich), the form and position of which was nonetheless most certainly conjectured to exist behind the apparent world and an inner world (Innenwelt), the primary and secondary forms of which were normally identical with those of the apparent world. The structure of real space was straight, parallel, endlessly long. This he called geometrical. The structure of apparent space was curved, converging and only went as far as the vault of the heavens. This he called perspectival.

    Conscious that this was different from the regular usage, Gehler proposed to call this spherical perspective based on retinal images absolute perspective and refer to traditional linear perspective of painters’ as relative perspective. Gehler cited the work of Schultze to point out that Kant used the concept of space in no less than fifteen ways (fig. 45). Hence while Kant had claimed to deal with space in one sense only, namely, the special space of persons (der spezielle Menschenraum), he had, claimed Gehler, dealt with at least four basic types: apparent space (1, 3, 6, 10 above); what was presumably real space (2, 4); combinations of apparent and real space (7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14) and impossible space (5, 11, 15).

    Gehler noted other problems with Kant’s approach: that his concept of perception was sometimes based on observation of the real world and sometimes of the apparent world. He went on to cite (197) Kant’s fundamental claim in the Prolegomena:

The starting point of all true idealists from the time of the Eleatic school until Bishop Berkeley is contained in the formulation: all knowledge through the senses and experience is mere appearance and only in the ideas of pure understanding and reason is truth [found]. The fundamental premise that reigns and determines my idealism is, by contrast: All knowledge of things based on pure understanding or pure reason is nothing other than mere appearance, and only in experience is truth [found].

1) space as it appears to everyman

2) the continuous extension that stretches out in all three dimensions of height, breadth and depth

3) space which each person necessarily puts forward (vorstellt)

4) a three dimensional space which finds its midpoint in every individual and which stretches out from

them infinitely

5) an individually determined space that depends on each subject and their view (Anschauung)

6) the space that every person truly sees perspectivally; actual appearance which we improve upon with

judgement based on experience

8) the sense of space that is corrected by judgment, which first arose through experience and reflection

9) my improved observation (Anschauung)

10) space that represents itself perspectivally

11) the fully subjective space determined by the standpoint of the observer

12) the perception of our senses, the errors of which we correct and balance on the basis of experience and

the judgement based thereon in our thoughts

13) the subjective perception of space corrected in our thoughts

14) our visual space in which our judgement is continuously and unconsciously active

15) the totality of spatial perceptions that each person naturally has, which are thoroughly individual and

subjective.

Fig. 45. Fifteen ways in which Kant used the concept of space according to Gehler (1912).

Kind of Nexus Cause Effect Name of Nexus

Completely 1. Two real objects Real object or Thoroughly conjectured

objective in opposition condition of same causal nexus

causal nexus

2. One real object and Apparent Image Causal nexus of perspectivist

a standpoint in

opposition.

Partially objective 3. Apparent image and Psychic thing in itself Psychophysical-causal nexus

partially eye (centre of vision) (not conscious seeing)

subjective nexus in opposition

Completely 4. Psychic thing in itself Our reality Causal nexus of understanding

subjective and understanding (conscious seeing)

causal nexus in opposition

5. Our reality and Our Idealism Causal nexus of reason.

and understanding

in opposition

Fig. 46. Five kinds of nexus according to Gehler (1912, 243).

    In Gehler’s view the answer lay not in one or other side of this supposed opposition, but rather in a combination of the two, or in his own terms, in a perfect fit between real object, apparent object and that recognized by the intellect. Gehler went on to chart no less than five different possibilities, describing the kind of nexus involved in each one (fig. 46).

    Whether or not we agree with his distinctions, Gehler’s efforts are of considerable interest because they make perspective, in his special sense of the term, fundamental to the process of knowing. Gehler drew upon the work of Helmholtz, Mach, Wundt, and a number of major philosophers and indeed, as we have seen, felt convinced that he had corrected Kant in this matter and that his new critical real-idealism (kritischen Real-Idealismus) would replace Kant’s empirical criticism.

    Vaihinger (1911) in his Philosphy of as If explored what he termed fictionalism and noted that "every fiction also contains a seeing of things 'as if they were so'."

    Pollack (1912), in his book on Perspective and Symbol, began with a chapter outlining his "Theory of viewpoints". He was against a purely relativistic position and wanted to re-establish a positivistic approach. To achieve this he argued that one needed to take relativism as a point of departure. It was not enough to recognize the historical limitations of earlier views: it was necessary to acknowledge the historical limitations of contemporary views. Only by taking this into account could one hope to achieve an enduring approach to knowledge and not fall a prey to American pragmatism against which he warned. Pollack noted that Nietzsche, who had been viewed by many as a peripheral figure, was in fact central to these philosophical questions. Petzoldt (1912), pursued similar ideas in his Problem of the world from the standpoint of relativistic positivism (142): "We can only think of the world from the standpoint from which we truly stand and not from a standpoint from which we cannot think ourselves as standing or from no viewpoint at all. There is no absolute viewpoint and there is no absence of viewpoint: there are only relative viewpoints".

    Two years later, Ortega Y Gasset, outlined the idea of different perspectives in his Meditations on Don Quixote (1914), with his theory of depth (teoria de la profundidad). This he developed in Truth and perspective (1916), where he insisted that perspectivism permitted one to avoid the twin poles of relativism (there are only individual opinions, hence truth does not exist), and dogmatism (a single body of truth exists, hence individual opinions do not matter). He suggested that: "The personal viewpoint is the only one from which the world, as it truly is, can be observed. Everything else is pretence". He admitted that there were problems with this diversity, and urged: "Yet if, rather than getting angry with one another, we unite our views in a selfless spiritual co-operation, we will build together the stream of reality, just as out of different streams the wide, stately river emerges.

    Ortega Y Gasset pursued these problems in The theme of our time (1923) where he claimed: "Perspective is one of the components of reality. It is not its distortion; it is its ordering schema:" He saw only one negative kind of perspective: "Just as a landscape has an endless number of perspectives whcih are all equally true and viable. Only the perspective is false which claims that it is the only one." He was conscious that his approach to perspective was a recent development: "Until today all philosophy was utopian. Each system pretended to be valid for all times and all peoples. The teaching of the standpoint requires, rather, that within a system, the vital perspective from which it stemmed, is expressed clearly."

    Kant, in his Critique of pure reason, had insisted that we cannot know things in themselves: "We know nothing more than our mode of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us and which, though not of necessity pertaining to every animated being, is so to the whole race". Hinton (1888), had noted that: "if our intuition of space is the means whereby we apprehend, then it follows that there may be different intuitions of space." He was convinced, moreover, that Gauss and Lobachevsky had shown that "we are quite capable of conceiving different kinds of space". These ideas of Kant and Hinton, combined with the psycho-physical claims of Mach were the starting point for Ouspensky’s (1920), Tertium Organum, in which he related four levels of consciousness with different senses of space and time and corresponding stages of psychology, logic, mathematics, forms of actions, morals, forms of consciousness, forms of knowledge, forms of science, and different beings to create a single metaphysical whole (fig. 47).

1. The sense of one-dimensional space

The world on the line

The line as space, everything alse as time

Everything except things lying on this line in motion

2. The sense of two-dimensional space

The world on the plane

The plane as space, everything else as time

Angles and curves as motions

3. The sense of three-dimensional space

The world in an infinite sphere

The sphere as space, everything else as time

Phenomena as motions. A becoming and changing universe

4. The sense of four dimensional space

Spatial sensation of time

Fig. 47. Four forms of the manifestation of consciousness and their relationship to a sense of space and time according to P. D. Ouspensky.

    Meanwhile, Karl Mannheim (1919), explored philosophical and sociological aspects of perspective in his seminal Ideology and utopia. One of his basic premises was that value free studies were impossible; that all attempts to identify objective actions were imbued with future intentions in the form of both political goals (ideology) and other dreams (utopia). This led him in the final section to a critique of existing theories of knowledge. It had been generally assumed that the exact sciences, with their emphasis on objectivity and truth, offered a paradigm for all knowledge. This had overlooked the interdependence between truth and social-historical dimensions. In the humanities the origins of a field (Genesis) were often necessarily value laden. One needed to recognize the active element in knowledge (Erkennen). Moreover he argued that there existed an intrinsic perspectivity of certain kinds of knowledge (255):

In certain areas of historical-social knowledge it is not a defect for a discipline (Wissenschaft) to maintain within itself its intrinsic point of view. On the contrary in these fields the possible points of view are intrinsically perspectival and the problem lies not in trying to suppress this perspectivity and to apologize for it, but rather to ask how in the element of this perspectivity, knowledge and objectivity are possible. Similarly, in the case of a visual image of a spatial object, it is hardly a source of error that the essential aspects of this spatial object can only be rendered perspectivally. Hence the problem lies not therein how one could produce a non-perspectival image but rather how one in comparing the different views one can arrive at seeing the perspectival as such and thus arrive at a new kind of objectivity. Hence here again the false ideal of an absolute, removed and impersonal view has to be replaced by the ideal of an intrinsically personal but at the same time constantly unfolding personal view.

    Mannheim claimed that there were basically two paths for the theory of knowledge. One could emphasize the importance of normative personal aspects of knowledge (Seinsverbundenheit) and insist on point of view (Standpunkt), arguing that this continued with the evolution of the social process of knowledge. In which case the accompanying theory of knowledge required revision insomuch that one needed to (258): "establish the essentially relational structure of human knowledge (in the way that the essential perspectivity of visual objects are accepted without question". The second path was that one need not insist on the absolutization of these personal aspects of knowledge (Seinsverbundenheit). Indeed the discovery of these personal factors in different viewpoints could mark a first step towards no longer being bound by them: "By adding a point of view indicator to a view that had taken itself as absolute, in a certain sense I neutralise the particularity of the view". Mannheim did not feel that one could know which of these two paths would be followed in future. In his view, the important fact was that both alternatives spelled the end of naive claims that there existed a sphere of truth per se. In his view, it was significant that in the exact sciences such naive claims had already been swept away by Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle. In conclusion, Mannheim mentioned some of the key thinkers who had made possible his new approach to a sociology of knowledge, including Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Lukacs and Scheler.

    Mannheim (1921-1922), pursued these ideas in an important article on "Contributions to the theory of world-view interpretation", where he outlined a struggle for synthesis, noting seeming tensions between rationalism and irrationalism because fields such as religion and art, although alogical and atheoretical were by no means irrational. Mannheim argued that there were three kinds of meaning (Arten des Sinnes): an objective meaning, an intended meaning and a documentary or characteristic meaning. While acknowledging the problems in arriving at an understanding of a world view, he concluded that the notions of mechanical causality which the humanities had adopted from the methodology of science was being replaced by a methodology that took into account historical world views.

    Mannheim (19**), further explored the metaphor of perspective in his Sociology of Knowledge, using as one of his points of departure the analogy between perspective and landscape which Ortega Y Gasset had used earlier:

Landscape as landscape - this is the example by means of which perspectivism is most clearly exemplified- can only present itself perspectivally to a human consciousness and yet a landscape does not dissove into the various possible images of itself, because each of these images is oriented towards something (whence not just any arbitrary image is possible) and because a given perspective, insomuch as it is correct, can also be tested by others. Having, however, conceded this, then history is only visible from history itself.....

Having accepted that metaphysical knowledge is cultural circle being bound knowledge, then one can only set out from a dynamic system in this sphere of thinking and not accept a unique system of transcendent truths.... However, if one concedes this, then only perspectivism remains possible, whereby the various epochs together become the important periods belonging to it, which as such seem to have an entity of their own, but from the historical observer can only be grasped perspectivally -- from positions which only come into being through the process of history.

    As noted earlier,Theodor Litt (1926) in his Modern Ethics saw the ideas of Leibniz and Schaftsbury as starting points for the perspectivism of Herder and later Nietzsche. Spranger (1929), in a fundamental article on "The meaning of value free judgements (Voraussetsungslosigkeit) in the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften)" analysed some of the latest developments in philosophy and theology. He recalled that Weber (1919), had expressed the idea of a value free approach to knowledge, but noted that there was a trend whereby world views and value judgements were considered to be at the root of rather than peripheral to the social sciences and the humanities. By way of illustration he cited three recent scholars: Rothacker, Litt and Scheler. Spranger noted that Erich Rothacker’s (1926), Logic and systematics in the humanities, used Dilthey’s three types of world views as a basis for idealized methods in the humanities. Rothacker argued that in order to understand concepts and methods of the humanities fully one needed to trace the roots of the world view on which they were based. As the various perspectives of the world views changed so too did the effective meaning of the sociological point of departure. Each world view had its methodological consequences and conversely.

    Spranger next considered Theodor Litt’s (1928), Knowledge, education (Bildung) and world view, claiming that he developed Hegelian objective idealism in keeping with Hegel’s general teaching concerning the unavoidable and fruitful perspectivism of world views by arguing that subjectivity was an inextricable dimension of any research; that the goal in science of trying to remove the subject from the process was disastrous if applied to the humanities. Litt attacked Kant and Weber’s positions concerning the separation of theory and practice, arguing instead that all meaningful thought in the humanities arose from a person deciding for themself, and a venture (Wagnis) from the personal perspective of meaning. Spanger also cited Max Scheler’s (1926), The form of knowledge and society, who examined a series of definitions of knowledge and criteria for truth, argued that there was no such thing as science for the sake of science and that every branch of knowledge was based on a world view.

    Spranger also discussed three factors to demonstrate why the humanities were necessarily dependent on assumptions (Voraussetzungen) and perspectives (Perspektiven): "1) The humanities are bound to the intellectual (geistige) content and form of the particular historical period in which they arise....; 2) All understanding in the humanities is bound to the intellectual breadth (capacity) and maturity of the research personality....; 3) Consciously or unconsciously all understanding comes from the basic position of a world view and only through this origin can it become the basis for ultimate values".

    Spranger saw two possible responses to this perspectivism in the humanities: one, a simple resignation to scepticism, which he decried; a second was to use this fragmentation of scholarly positions as a basis for further development. He noted three trends which made feasible this alternative. First, notwithstanding the different points of departure, entry and various values in the humanities, the underlying law (Gesetz) guiding all learning was the idea of truth (Wahrheit). Second, although persons in the humanities had various assumptions and values, their quest for truth meant that they were willing to subject these assumptions and values to criticism and revise them as necessary. This distinguished the humanities from simple dogmatism. Third, even if these processes of self-criticism and correction did not eliminate all contradictory points of view, then the intent at finding truth could again guide one towards a synthesis that was not purely relativistic.

    Spranger had noted that there were serious dangers in pretending that scholarship in the humanities could be value free when it clearly was not. He ended his article by claiming that the new value bound approach to scholarship was equally if not more dangerous. First, it could lead to a new subjectivism. Second and more serious, there were dangers that individuals attempt to limit universities to one particular world view. He cited the case of Russia and the rising fascism in Germany (in 1929). Or that different world views be relegated to different departments within the university. The challenge he claimed was to insure that thinking and doing remained connected.

    Not everyone accepted this new emphasis on perspectivism of viewpoints and world views. In Germany, for example, Heidegger (1927), in Being and Time, launched a basic attack on the concept of appearance (Erscheinung), and set out to destroy any notion of perspectivity. Heidegger focussed on the concept of phenomenon, which for him signified "that which shows itself in itself, the manifest". He noted that it was: "possible for an entity to show itself as something which it is not....This kind of showing itself we call "seeming" (Scheinen)....What appears does not show itself; and anything which thus fails to show itself, is also something which can never seem". Even so Heidegger’s critique of perspectivism remained largely implicit.

    Meanwhile, the phenomenologists were trying to understand these problems in their own terms. Becker (1923), wrote a significant article of "Contributions to the phenomenological foundation of geometry and its physical applications" in which he identified three kinds of space (fig. 48).

1. Pre-spatial (pre or quasi spatial) fields or fields of extension

a) sensory fields (prespatial fields. First Level)

b) fields of movement of the organs (prespatial fields. Second level)

2. Orientation space

3. Homogeneous (unlimited) space.

Fig. 48. Three kinds of space according to Becker (1923).

    In the United States, Lovejoy (1930), launched an explicit attack on perspective in his Revolt against dualism. He associated the "perspective realists" and the "objective realists" with the scientific positivism of Mach and Petzoldt. In his view cognition was a direct relation between mind and object. A perspective designated certain aspects of an object that entered into a relation of co-presence with the mind. The mind was a focal point for perspectives (cf. the quote by Kant in connection with Gebser below p. 176*). Lovejoy was critical of this process because, he claimed, perspectivity also relied on the position of the percipient which changed from one person to the other (120): "From my point of view the penny may appear elliptical, from yours, circular". And yet a standpoint implied the existence of something that was not relative. The possibility that if person a who saw the penny as an ellipse could see a circle if he moved to the position of person b who saw it as a circle appears not to have occured to Lovejoy and hence he assumed that viewpoints could at best be a condition not a goal of knowledge and indeed that they led to (123): "a general deliquescence of the notion of factual truth and falsity".

    Notwithstanding such protests, McGilvary (1934), claimed that "in recent philosophy the problem of perspectivity has become of the greatest importance". For him the concept of a standpoint had become basic to perspective realists (1956,p.1):

The perspective realist makes no claim that he can speak for the universe as it is for itself. He does not consider himself as an outsider looking on, a stranger as it were, from some supernatural realm, passively contemplating a world of nature with whose goings-on he has no active business. On the contrary, he is a natural organism responding to natural stimulations and acquiring thereby such knowledge as nature thereupon puts at his disposal. This knowledge, as far as he can integrate it into a system, is his philosophy. As this knowledge and the integration of it develops, his philosophy develops.... A mature philosophy for him is an ideal never realized. He sees in part, he knows in part, he prophesies in part; and that which is perfect never comes, except as a goal that lies afar off before him.

    In contrast to the ever more personal trends in Ortega, George Herbert Mead (1938), introduced an ultrapersonal concept which has had an impact on the concept of perspective-taking (see below p. 205*, 211*):

The perspective is the world in its relationship to the individual and the individual in its relationship to the world. The social individual is already in a perspective which belongs to the community within which his self has arisen....This involves the assumption of the community attitudes where all speak with one voice in the organization of social conduct. The whole process of thinking is the inner conversation going on between the generalized other and the individual.

    The French philosopher, Merleau-Ponty also explored the metaphor of perspective in his Phenomenology of Perception (1945). He suggested, for instance that one should: "conceive perspectives and point of view as our insertion into the world of individuals." Elsewhere he spoke of perspective as a way to "slide into the whole world". His concept of perspective was less straightforward than earlier writers as when he claimed that: "The object and the world do not exist except as lived by myself or by subjects such as myself, because they are the sequence of our perspectives, but they transcend all perspectives because this sequence is temporal and unachieved," or when he noted that : "When I look at an horizon it does not make me think of that other landscape that I would see if I were there, nor that one of a third landscape and so on, I do not imagine anything, but all the landscapes are already there in a concordant sequence and the open infinity of their perspectives." Notwithstanding such statements, there are trends in criticism which seek to place Merleau-Ponty into the camp of anti-ocular thinkers (see below p.***).

    Hegel, in his Phenomenology of the Spirit (), had devoted a fourth chapter to the dialectic of I and the Other. This was one of the starting points for Husserl’s (written c. 1915, published 1973), Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity, in which he explored contradictory aspects of points of view that anticipated later developments in perspective taking:

The ‘if I were there I would see myself from there and so I would have this view’ is a contradictory notion. It has a good reason however: that a doubling of the I is possible, just as a doubling of a given real thing, that is, the possibility of two subjects with two bodies becomes clear in this contradictory notion....

Now when, in this way before the actual having of another subject, I can gain a possible notion of it, this indicates how this notion should present itself, how another subject should be given. The exterior representing appearing I is given externally when I see an object which, through its similarity with mine calls for the apperception of an I that is a stranger, that is an I like myself. And that is to say the apperception is precisely such as when, in the sense of that contradictory notion that was made unequivocal, I have not just a simple external appearance of life, but also one that points back to an interior appearance, to the same kind that I would have if I moved there or were there.

    Elsewhere Husserl claimed that "through perspectivisation the distancing things constitute themselves." As Diemer has noted, Husserl also used a number of perspectival metaphors in his writings, including shading (Abschattung), horizon (Horizont), circle of vision (Gesichtskreis) and standpoint (Standpunkt).

    Another reason for his interest in perspective related to his interpretation of historical events in terms of early modern science, which Husserl (1935) explored in The crisis of European science and transcendental philosophy. According to Husserl, Renaissance perspective had introduced an antagonism between subjective and mathematical space. Perspective thus vacillated between two seemingly contradictory interpretations: one which had its accent on the eye as a centre of projection and focussed on distortions as in anamorphoses; the other which emphasized the perspectival vanishing point of geometrical-mathematical bodies. The Galileian world view had linked science with mathematical space with the result that one had only objects without perspectival viewpoints. There was no room left for perceptual space. Husserl was concerned with creating a transcendental subjectivity which brought human beings back into the centre of experience, defining the I as a consciousness that enters perspectivally into a polarity between self and object and is thus present in every act. Perspective in this sense thus became linked with the problem of life and presence (Präsenz) became one of the reasons for perspectival consciousness, which affected both space and time.

    De Folter (1983) explored the reciprocity of perspectives in the work of husserl, claiming that this plays an importat role in the intersubjectively identical thing and the intersubjectively identical world. every I is the zero point of an oriented world of appearances, i.e. it is the zero point of a system of co-ordinates from which all things in the world, known and unknown, are observed, ordered and understood. The I is incarnate in the body (Leib), often termed the perceptual body (Wahnehmungsleib) or body of the will (Willensleib) and constantly carries the "here" with it, with respect to which everything else is "there". As perceptual organ the body is bound to a fixed perspective or group of perspectives.

    This identity through means of orientation applies both at the level of the solipsistic subject and the intersubjectivty of objects in the object world. As a result: "If I were to take the position of another person and he were to take mine, then his sequences would be the same as I now have them in my position and vice versa." In practice this means I can attain the same but not the identical appearances of the physical environment.

If the world is to be one, in itself with respect to all subjective appearances, and if it is to be possible to express objectively valid truths which can no longer be drawn [back] into the realti