Every vision is a spatial decision. This formula, which blends geometry, art and philosophy, captures the core intuition behind perspectivism: what we see – and more radically, what we can think – depends on where we stand, on the position we occupy in the world, on the angle from which we observe it. There is no absolute gaze: every vision is situated, every knowledge is partial, every truth is oriented.
Perspective is, above all, a powerful metaphor. It was first developed as a visual technique in fifteenth-century Florence, but quickly became a grammar of space and a philosophy of image-making. The invention of linear perspective – based on the vanishing point and the geometric reduction of the world relative to the eye of the observer – transformed not only painting, but the very way in which the Western mind conceives of reality. From that moment on, seeing was no longer a neutral act but a constructive one – an operation that organizes, selects, and arranges. A symbolic form, as Cassirer might say, capable of reshaping the relationship between mind, space, and meaning.
At the same time, the astronomical revolutions of Copernicus and Kepler dismantled the illusion of a geocentric cosmos centered around the human observer. As Blumenberg pointed out, Cosmology, too, became perspectival: it sought to describe the universe not as it appears to us, but as it might be conceived from multiple, decentered vantage points. Modernity begins at the moment when we become aware of the relativity of observation – whether through the painter’s eye or the astronomer’s telescope, what is revealed is always conditioned by one’s position.
From these two axes – visual art and spatial science – perspectivism enters philosophy. Throughout the centuries, philosophical thought has taken visual experience as a model for knowledge itself. While Plato imagines knowledge as an ascent toward the light, it is only with figures like Leibniz, Nietzsche, Husserl and James that we find an explicit formulation of the idea that every form of knowledge is a vision from a point of view. In Nietzsche, especially, we find a genealogy of knowledge as a play of perspectives – multiple, conflicting, and dynamic – where truth is no longer a correspondence, but the expression of a more powerful, fertile, and life-affirming vision. There is no objectivity that is not constructed, situated, and historically mediated.
Perspectivism, in its richest and most complex sense, is not merely an affirmation of epistemic multiplicity. It is not a weak form of relativism, nor a renunciation of truth-seeking. Rather, it is a philosophical orientation – epistemological, ontological, and ethical –based on the recognition of difference: a difference that does not dissolve the world into incommensurable fragments but instead returns it to us in its full complexity, depth, and plurality. Like a landscape that changes depending on the altitude or angle from which it is viewed, reality reveals itself differently according to our position, our horizon, our openness to the world.
To think in perspective is thus to become aware of the partiality of our own viewpoint. It is to learn how to dwell in a world of multiple and sometimes conflicting perspectives – without denying their difference, but also without abandoning the pursuit of understanding. Perspectivism can thus be understood as an ethics of vision: it demands responsibility, attentiveness, and the capacity to orient oneself amidst plurality. It also implies an aesthetics in the original sense of aisthesis: a situated, embodied, and affective way of sensing the world. And finally, it suggests a politics: if living together means negotiating different worldviews, then perspectivism offers us the tools for a more nuanced and dialogical coexistence.
This Call for Papers invites contributions that reflect on perspectivism as a cross-disciplinary philosophical category, a grammar of contemporary thought, and a generative metaphor for rethinking the relationships between knowledge, interpretation, and value. We welcome essays that explore the genealogy, structure, and implications of perspectival thinking along three major thematic axes:
1. History of Philosophy: Genealogies of Situated Vision
Western philosophy has long relied on visual metaphors to conceive of knowledge. But it is in the modern period that the point of view becomes a philosophical object in its own right. From Plato to Pascal, from Giambattista Vico to Wilhelm Dilthey, from Nietzsche to Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, philosophical thought increasingly acknowledges that access to the world is always mediated – by angle, by embodiment, by historical position.
We welcome contributions that trace continuities and ruptures in the philosophical tradition around the concept of perspective, the theorization of vision, and the critique of epistemic neutrality. Papers on lesser-known thinkers, non-European traditions, or interdisciplinary intersections between philosophy, science, art, and politics are especially encouraged.
2. Hermeneutics and Aesthetics: Horizons of Meaning and Visual Composition
Every interpretation is a way of seeing, and every aesthetic act is a configuration of the gaze. Contemporary hermeneutics has shown that understanding is a movement between horizons – our own and that of the other. In this sense, perspective is not just a visual technique, but a metaphor of interpretation: like the painter who chooses a frame or angle, the interpreter constructs meaning by selecting and positioning.
This section invites essays that investigate the link between perspective and interpretation in texts, images, and aesthetic experiences. What role does the viewer play? How does art make the invisible visible through spatial organization? How are horizons of meaning constructed, negotiated, and transformed?
3. Moral and Feminist Philosophy: Ethics of Vision and the Plurality of Values
In today’s pluralistic world—marked by cultural diversity, value conflicts, and normative uncertainty—perspectivism may offer a way to rethink ethics. To adopt a perspectival view means recognizing the legitimacy of different viewpoints, but also taking responsibility for one’s own. It means acting with awareness in a world where moral perspectives may clash.
We invite contributions that explore what an ethics of perspective might look like. What is the role of empathy in recognizing the other’s viewpoint? How can we act responsibly when moral frameworks diverge? How does perspectivism differ from relativism, and how can it inform contemporary normative theory?
Editors:
Federica Buongiorno (Università degli Studi di Firenze); Nicola Zambon (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg)
Deadline for submission: 1.12.2026
Humana.Mente publishes exclusively in English. Papers must be original and not currently under review elsewhere. Articles may be as long as 12.000 words (including abstract, footnotes, and references).
