@kennethamy,
Here's some more to chew over:
[CENTER]
The Idea of Perspective [/CENTER]
2. "Real" perspective and "abstract" perspectives.
A perspective is not real-we have already see that-, if it not concrete, individual, personal or, to resume all those characters in a single word,
vital. (We shall use, thus, in the succeeding the terms "real perspective" and "vital perspective" as synonymous.) Already in what came before we have found important essential traces of all real perspective. Provisionally, all those of the "visual perspective" (modified by Ortega in the sense that remains expounded), that is to say, those comprehended in our initial schematic description. To those we must add the following:
All
real perspective is concrete, individual, personal, selective,
unique-untransferable-(those characters have already been explained).
Real perspective cannot be
only visual, nor only spatial: it has to be, in addition, and at the same time, intellectual, affective, estimative, pragmatic and, of course, "temporal" (of the meanings of this term we will occupy ourselves in a separate paragraph). All these are diverse "dimensions" of the
vital perspective, which are founded or articulate themselves in the real unity of it. Of each one of them one can say also that it is a "perspective"; as one speaks of "visual perspective" one can speak of "intellectual perspective", "estimative" or "evaluative perspective", etc.-and Ortega does it thusly with much frequency-; because, in effect, all of the generic, essential traces of every perspective correspond to them, but on the condition of understanding that all these partial "perspectives" are, taken separately, as we have said, abstract, and that they only acquire effectiveness, primary reality, entering into integrating a
vital perspective. We sum up this character saying that the
real perspective has to be
complete (in a first sense of the word, that opposes itself to "partial").
But, in addition,
real perspective has to be
complete in a second sense: in that it should not lack any of its essential termini or planes. It ought to have, as such a
first and a
last plane (a necessary condition for there to be intermediate ones). This condition was already established in the third requisite of our initial schema, and it pertains for that [reason] to
all perspective. But dealing with the
real perspective, this generic trace borrows a precise and peculiar signification, to wit: that its planes order themselves and organize themselves in the form of a
world. [. . .] And as the world comes to identify itself with the
circumstance-in the wide acceptation of the word-, we can express this character saying that all
real perspective is
circumstantial or
worldly. In addition, and also by virtue of that, it is
situational. The situation comes to be defined by the concrete
here and
now, that is to say those of
such individual in such a place and in such a moment of his existence. All that brings with it a determinate structure of the
real perspective. [. . .] The more general laws of that description are, in addition to the one that says that
the world is a perspective, the following:
1. In everything [that is]
present the world is
compresent (the
compresent is the latent and, save exceptions, is a potential presence). We could also say [. . .] that every
present thing is a "foreshortening" of the world. (It's another aspect of the law of universal connection or complication.)
2. The circumstance or world in view ("circumstance" in the restricted sense) is called
surrounding, and the line that limits and separates the latent
further on is called
horizon. Every thing noticed by the attention stands out on this background which the horizon circumscribes-visible, although unattended-, and this it turn remits us to the
trans-world or ultimate plane of the perspective.
3. The world of the real perspective, in its radical mode of being, is a
pragmatic world, that is to say, a world in which the things are "importances" or "affairs"-
-, whose being is a
being for my conveniences or interests, a "serviceable" being. These things organize themselves in diverse "architectures of serviceability" which are called
pragmatic fields, and which are referred to the diverse regions of the space.
[CENTER][ * * * ][/CENTER]
Every real perspective, in being
dynamic, mobile, is always in some measure
new.
The dynamism of every
real perspective has as its ultimate reason the constitutive
temporality of reality itself, and, in this sense, we can say that the perspective is
temporal-noticing always that it's a matter of living time and that, as such, the dynamic or temporal structure of the perspective has the precise character of a
dramatic structure (because this the most genuine condition of
life)-. But, in another sense, one can speak of "temporal perspective" to indicate that time itself is seen or perceived by us as a perspective, with its "planes", "distances", etc. The "temporal perspective", in this second sense, is one of several partial perspectives and, as such, abstract. The determination of the temporality of the
real perspective as "dramatic" permits us to add one more note to the concept of "situation"; that is: that in the
now of each situation the totality of the existence of man is implicated-as the
here implicates the
there and, definitively, the world-, that is to say, that the
now of each "situation", resulting from all the past, carries in turn, "foreshortened" all the future, and it as a function of the "project" or "program" that each man is. We would say, therefore, that every "situation" and as a consequence, every
real perspective is, in such a concrete sense,
projective.
The two anterior characters confer to all real perspective an
ethical structure. In effect, if the last plane of the perspective is that of the last
ends, the other planes would remain qualified as
means. Which comes to be confirmed by the fact of the
being for (for human ends) of things and,even more energetically and directly, by the
dramatic consistency of the proper dynamism of the
vital perspective, which makes of the latter a
justificative structure.
There is, therefore, in all
real perspective not only an "ordering of planes or termini", but also an "ordering of ranks or values" [. . .], that is to say, a hierarchy. And even though it refers itself primordially to the ethical aspect, it extends to all the fields of valuation ("the visual perspective and the intellectual [one] are complicated with the perspective of valuation"-Ortega says in
Verdad y perspectiva ["Truth and Perspective" (1916)]
-). An affective or estimative perspective is, thus, completely essential to all real perspective; its
selective character does not signify anything else; we saw above that every
attending-and without it there is no perspective-is already a
preferring and a
postponing.
Another factor-and the most profound and decisive [one]-which confers on
real perspective its ethical consistency, is the radical function that personal
destiny performs in its constitution, and which has the dignity of
mission. Let us call this [the] "missive character" of the perspective.
All
real perspective is
problematic, that is, it includes a "perspective of problems", in which these are subordinated to a fundamental problem: that of
coinciding with oneself or, said in another say,
encasing ones proper destiny. The problematicity, the radical insecurity of human life is translated into this dimension from the
vital perspective. One must add that this problematicity is such because it carries harnessed to it the inexorable
necessity for solutions and, in addition, that it acts in every moment, because in every moment man sees himself as forced to
do something-to
make himself his proper life, that "is not given to him [already] made," but rather exactly as "something that there is to do", as a
thing-to-do [
quehacer]-and that which he has to do must be done by himself, be decided for himself by himself, because, whether he wishes or not, he is free, etc. Each moment brings, therefore, its problem, situated and articulated in the total perspective of problems that human life is.
From there the necessity of "knowing what to attend to" of man and, as such, the necessity for an "intellectual perspective" within all
real perspective. The "intellectual perspective" is the
contra post of the "perspective of problems," is the perspective of "solutions". [. . .]
These are the indispensable descriptive traces, the minimal [ones], that sketch out the idea of
real or
vital perspective, which is always
concrete. Of whatever perspective that does not unite all these characters we can say, therefore, that it is an abstract perspective and, in that measure "irreal". (To be irreal, it is well understood, does not signify that it does not have any reality, but only that it has a secondary, derived reality and . . ., precisely,
abstract, that is, "separated". Separated from what? Exactly from the
real and
concrete life. It is, thus, irreal, with reference to this radical mode of being real that is that of
my life-"radical reality"-. In "taking" something separated from the real and concrete life in which it is given, we extirpate it automatically [from] its primary reality and we convert it into an "abstract". An abstract has, certainly, reality, but not the reality of an originary deed.)
Abstract perspectives.-There are two principal types of these, and within each type various grades. The first type of abstraction opposes itself to the
complete character of the real perspective (in its first acceptation, that is to say,
complete in as much as not partial). Abstract is, in this sense, whatever of the "dimensions" of the
real perspective that can also be called "perspectives"-although partial-: the "spatial perspective", the "temporal perspective", the "estimative perspective", the "intellectual perspective". Each one of them, taken separately, is abstract in first degree. But within each one there operate yet new abstractions, which then would be in second, third degree, etcetera. (For example, if within the "intellectual perspective", we speak of the "scientific perspective", or, within this, of a "perspective of physical science" and thus successively.
The second type of abstraction is opposed to the
individual character of the
real perspective. There are, in effect,
collective "perspectives", and Ortega speaks frequently of them. And there are also various possible degrees of abstraction: "perspective of humanity"-maximum degree of abstraction-, "perspective of a civilization", of a "cultural circle", of a "people", of a "group"-within a "people"-, etcetera.; or else, with direct reference to the historic time, "perspective of an era", of a "century", of a "generation" . . . And even one can speak of many other modalities of "abstract perspective", for example of a "perspective of the professions", of the "sexes", of the "ages of life", of "social classes", etc. [. . .]
All these "abstract perspectives" function simultaneously and conjointly with the concrete
vital or
real perspective, and each one of them represents an indicator or "instance of complexity" of it. [. . .]
[Translated by longknowledge from
Perspectiva y verdad: El problema de la verdad en Ortega ["Perspective and Truth: The Problem of Truth in Ortega"], Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1966, pp. 105-110.]
