Abstract
The aim of this paper is to analyze ethical perspectivism as an attempt to recover the objectivity of reality and value, following Scheler and Ortega y Gasset. Perspectivism will be distinguished from both universalism and subjectivist relativism. The idea of perspective in the realm of ethics can be found in Scheler’s notion of “good itself for me”. As well as universal duties, other duties exist only for each life and person.
The philosophy of value entails a return to ethical objetivism. We could speak about a cordial objectivity of natural law. However, there are substantial differences between ethics of values and the traditional theory of natural law, especially, through the overcoming of the idea of what is universally valid. Despite the differences between perspectivism and natural law tradition (especially, the refusal to derive moral law from human nature) the philosophy of perspective can be considered as a new version of the natural law theory, full of interest for both ethics and philosophy of law.
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- 1.
Plato, Theaetetus, 167b.
- 2.
Plato, Theaetetus, 172ab.
- 3.
Worth mentioning in this regard is the work of Edmund Husserl, and particularly Philosophy as a Rigorous Science.
- 4.
Scheler (1973), XVIII.
- 5.
Scheler (1973), 15.
- 6.
Hartmann (1949), 121.
- 7.
Ortega y Gasset (2005a), 544. Own translation.
- 8.
Ortega y Gasset J., ibid., 544–546. Own translation.
- 9.
Rodríguez Paniagua (1981), 145 ff. Own translation.
- 10.
Scheler (1973), 40 ff.
- 11.
Scheler (1973), 89 ff.
- 12.
Rodríguez Paniagua (1981), 167. Own translation.
- 13.
Scheler (1973), 85.
- 14.
Scheler (1973), 40 ff.
- 15.
Scheler (1973), 82 ff.
- 16.
Hartmann (1949), 171.
- 17.
“My natural exit route to the universe opens across the passes of the Guadarrama Mountains or the fields of Ontígola. This sector of circumstantial reality forms the other half of my person: only through it can I make myself whole and be fully myself. The most recent biological science studies the living organism as a unity composed of the body and its particular medium, so that the life process consists not only in an adaptation of the body to its medium, but also in the adaptation of the medium to its body. The hand endeavours to mould itself to the material object in order to grasp it well, but at the same time every material object hides a prior affinity with a certain hand. I am I and my circumstance, and if I do not save it, I do not save myself. Benefac loco illi quo natus es, we read in the Bible. And in the Platonic school, we are told the enterprise of all culture is: “to save appearances”, phenomena. That is, to search for the sense of what lies around us.” (Ortega y Gasset (2005 b), 756 ff.).
- 18.
“But this set of enforced circumstances does not affect our life in such a way that it must be governed by an ineluctable and mechanical trajectory, but it always leaves a margin for free choice: so that at every moment our existence is a given fatal circumstance which our will can take in its hands and push in the direction of perfection. There is no life if the given circumstance is not accepted, and there is no good living if our freedom does not concretise it on the road to perfection. This same idea is contained in the beautiful phrase used by the great German thinker Nietzsche, when, referring to the poet, he said he is the man who ‘dances in chains’ ” (Ortega y Gasset (2005c), 228. Own translation.).
- 19.
On all this, see Marías (1983), especially 379 ff.
- 20.
“In any landscape, in any precinct where we open our eyes, the number of visible things is practically infinite, but we can only see a very small number of them at any given moment. The eyesight has to fix itself on a small group of them and veer away from the others, abandoning them. To put it another way, we cannot see one thing without ceasing to see the others, without blinding ourselves to them transitorily. Seeing this implies unseeing that, just as hearing one sound implies unhearing the rest. It is instructive for many purposes to have happened on the paradox that there is normally, necessarily, a certain dose of blindness partaking in sight. To see, it is not enough for the ocular apparatus to exist on the one hand and the visible object on the other, the latter situated among many others which are also visible: it is necessary that we should direct our pupil towards that object and withdraw it from the others. To see, in short, it is necessary to look. But looking is precisely searching for the object beforehand, and is like a pre-seeing before seeing it. Apparently, sight presupposes a foresight, which is the work of neither the pupil nor the object but of a prior faculty with the mission of directing the eyes, of exploring the outline with them. This is attention. Without a minimum of attention, we would see nothing. But attention is nothing but an anticipated preference for certain objects that pre-exists in us. Take a hunter, a painter and a ploughman to the same landscape, and the eyes of each will see different ingredients of the countryside; strictly speaking, three different landscapes. And let it not be said that the hunter prefers his hunting landscape after having seen those of the painter and the ploughman. No, those he has not seen, nor will he strictly speaking ever see them. From the outset, whenever he was in the countryside he would look almost exclusively at the elements of the landscape of relevance to hunting.” (Ortega y Gasset (1973), 157. Own translation.).
- 21.
Marías (1983), 363 ff.
- 22.
Ortega y Gasset (2005b), p. 756. Own translation.
- 23.
Marías (Marías 1983), 372. Own translation.
- 24.
On all this, see Rodríguez Huéscar (1966).
- 25.
Scheler (1973), 317.
- 26.
Idem.
- 27.
Ibidem, 317 ff.
- 28.
Ibidem, 318.
- 29.
Ibidem, 319.
- 30.
Ibidem, 320.
- 31.
Ibidem, 324.
- 32.
“It therefore belongs by right to a moral individual qua individual to be protected by this principle from the false claims of merely universal moral laws. But this conscience and the freedom of conscience dissolve neither the idea of an objective good, for which “conscience” is precisely a cognitive organ insofar it is the objective good for an individual, nor the idea or the right of a universally valid insight in regard to value-propositions and norms that are valid for all men. On the contrary, these are quite independent of “conscience” and are accessible through strict insight; and though they possess an obliging character that is wholly independent of recognition by conscience on the part of anyone. “Freedom of conscience” in the true sense can therefore never be played off against a strict and objective and obliging cognition of universally valid and also non-formal moral propositions. It is therefore certainly not a “principle of anarchy” in moral questions.” (Ibidem, 325 ff.).
- 33.
On the strict concept and the broad concept of Natural Law, see Rodríguez Paniagua (1981), 70–90.
- 34.
Ibidem, 72. Own translation.
- 35.
Ibidem, 79 ff.
- 36.
Ibidem, 80. Own translation.
- 37.
- 38.
Rodríguez Paniagua (1981), 81.
- 39.
Ibidem, 84. Own translation.
- 40.
Ibidem, 87.
- 41.
Ibidem, 89.
- 42.
Scheler establishes the following hierarchical criterion for ordering values, from least to most elevated: (1) Values of the agreeable and disagreeable. (2) Vital values. (3) Spiritual values: values of art, science and right and wrong. (4) Values of holy and unholy (Scheler (1973), 110 ff.). Hartmann accepts this criterion, but complements it with that of urgency or social need for the realisation of the value, which demands priority for the lower or most basic values (Hartmann (1949), 602).
- 43.
- 44.
Rodríguez Paniagua (1981), 174 ff.
- 45.
Kant (2010), 29.
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Cámara, I.S. (2013). Perspectivism and Natural Law. In: Contreras, F. (eds) The Threads of Natural Law. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5656-4_8
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