The idea of game becomes, in this situation, particularly interesting and valuable; not in the ludic sense that links it to the arbitrary of subjectivity or to differentiating modalities of social interaction, but in a pragmatical inspiration that gathers in Wittgenstein its most decisive elements. What I suggest is an understanding of rationality that will lenghthen the Wittgensteinian thematization of the notion of language game, one that will reassume, now regarding rationality in the sense of rupture performed by Wittgenstein in the sphere of language, doing away with the understanding of rationality in terms of a unitarian activity in what practice is concerned and homogeneous in the development.
The Wittgensteinian thematization of the language games contains, in what regards the problem of rationality the possibility of a detachment from the idea that, in a pertinent way, influences the traditional approaches: the one that refers that rationality consists, in some way or other, (and these modalities shape, in its essential, what the differences between these approaches are), in the constringent imposition of rules that aim guaranteeing not only the unity of reason but also the tendentially homogeneous exercise of its universality. We can find here the hard kernel of scientific model of rationality, that led, historically, to its definition increasingly canonical and criterially explicit, to its identification to the consecution of pre-determined objectives. It is precisely this rigidity that the idea of game breaks: the rules are important due to the heterogeneous, this function in an instrumental manner and their field includes the most extreme diversity. And, most important, yet, is that what distinguishes them are not the logical prescriptions but, community dynamic, making its flexibility reach the criteria if its uses themselves.
The games of rationality establish themselves, henceforth, as differentiated, heterogeneous, conflictual processes of rationalization, communities in which they emerge and develop: and, therefore, they also display the infinite game of contingency, the one in which, in the they give perspectivism, a new form which, in the convergence of rated now as problematic of effects.
III
3. We have now reached the third – and last – point of the development we proposed, which is, finally, that which justifies the title chosen for this paper: rhetoric and perspectivism.
We have already seen that perspectivism states that all knowledge, and not only, but also values (a point I will leave out) is solidary whit one perspective. One of the most discussed themes concerning perspectivism derives precisely from this point; it is the self-reference problem.
The question is if perspectivism is or not in itself a perspective. And, the alternative which is generally admitted, says that if it is not, then there are forms of knowledge which are not perspectives, and if it is, how can one refuse other perspectives that consider that knowledge is, precisely, able to escape the perspective form?
As one can see, the difficulty is great and, it was their persistence that led some of Nietzsche’s commentators to abandon the epistemological field and look for an answer in the articulation of the perspectivist demand whit the powers of life, of its affirmation, of its game of active and reactive forces, etc. But it is not difficult to see how the problem remains or is postponed and that, in a manner, only the main critics are transferred from one point to another.
To avoid this situation one needs more. One most, above all understand perspectivism not as a theory of knowledge, an extremely controverse epistemology, but as an alternative to epistemology – mology itself, a global alternative and not an attempt to solve occasional difficulties that might gradually appear.
Perspectivism does not have only, as we have seen rhetorical bases; much more than that, it consists in a fundamentally rhetorical strategic which aims at avoiding the problems and the paradoxes which the epistemological tradition lives of; this tradition tries to mainly promote another way of speaking of and of understanding knowledge. Evaluating perspectivism according to the criteria of evaluation of theories is, thus, as easy as it is useless; its strength derives from somewhere else, it derives from precisely the strong suggestion whit it identifies itself: there is a power which is superior to that of the theories and, that power is the power of language.