Hegel's perspectivism (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)

This dissertation argues that a "perspectivism" is at work at the very basis of Hegel's thinking. This does not mean that Hegel is a Nietzschean, for whom there is no truth. Instead, for Hegel, truth is the development through, what I call, perspectives. Truth is not a static determination, but rather a dynamic becoming. The method of Hegel's speculative logic articulates how opposed truths eventually include one another. Hegel's project not merely attempts to grasp different truths, but it attempts to grasp the movement between truths itself. It is namely this movement that constitutes truth. For example, Hegel regards the different perspectives upon reality that we find in the history of philosophy as a unity. Different philosophical systems do not merely contradict or negate one another. Each and every new standpoint is, in fact, the result of the previous philosophical standpoints. The history of philosophy is, as such, a movement of perspectives, i.e., of different truths or standpoints that relate to and constitute one another.; I focus upon the Science of Logic, a work that provides a tremendously important insight into truths, into transitions of truths, and into the development of truths, as well as into the relationship between all these standpoints of truth as a system. This system entails a system of perspectives, i.e., a system of standpoints that relate to other standpoints. The system, in the end, constitutes a unity as a differentiation of related perspectives, a dynamic system of "perspectives." In this "perspectivism" different truths relate to one another. Examples of these "truths" are objectivity and subjectivity, inner and outer, form and matter, quality and quantity, as well as different philosophical systems. The relation of these truths is dynamic as each newly developed truth is both result and a new ground, since it re-determines the previous standpoints out of which it developed. Hegel's aim is to grasp this dynamic movement in the constitution of a method.