Perspectivalism

As an undergraduate I took a delightful course in the Philosophy of Religion from a young lecturer named Tony Godzieba. He was a committed anti-foundationalist, and would discourse passionately on the Hermeneutics of Suspicion -- along with Augustine and Aquinas we read Nietzsche and Freud and Ricoeur and had a grand old time. But Tony had one deeply ingrained habit that used to drive me nuts. He took seriously the idea that there was no neutral vantage point from which we could discuss absolute truths; rather, our lively class discussions were to be thought of as interactions between a variety of perspectives. And he knew that my friend Padi Boyd (who was also taking the class) and I were the astronomy majors in the room. So whenever he would call on either of us, he would (with the best of intentions) inevitably say something like "So now let's get the ...