For it may be doubted, firstly, whether antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional perspectives, besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from below--"frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow an expression current among painters. In spite of all the value which may belong to the true, the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It might even be possible that WHAT constitutes the value of those good and respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed things--perhaps even in being essentially identical with them.
~ Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
No, I'm not sitting around reading Nietzsche and smoking a pipe - it's being e-mailed to me in little three-and-a-half minute snippets, thanks to Caterina, who introduced me to DailyLit.
In my e-mail this morning, Nietzsche refers to "frog perspectives," which he says is an artist's terminology for claiming any perspective of another. The idea intrigued me, so I thought I'd explore a bit. Two hours later I don't really know much more than I did, unfortunately.
Because it seems that molecular biologists have frog perspectives too. And historians. And librarians. And mathematicians. And photographers.
But still nothing on art.
It's not easy being green. ;)
