This book is a defence of perspectivism the age of post-truth. At the crossroads of science, art and philosophy, it unearths a tradition that we must rediscover: the point of view is not only what divides, it is also what is shared.
Today, perspective is associated with individualism and personal viewpoints. But in an age of post-truth, the only robust answer to relativism lies in fact in reappraisal of perspectivism. In discussion with contemporary new realisms of various sorts, the book makes a case why perspectivism alone can avoid us falling back into epistemological naivetés. A journey into the history of optics, art, philosophy, and social psychology, the book unearths the forgotten tradition of perspectiva communis, which makes perspective the vector of a common horizon. This book argues that vision is never immediate. Rather, that to see through is the key to understanding the perspectival operation. We never see by ourselves—all seeing must pass through something other than itself, through the mediation and the detour of an apparatus or the witness of a third party. Besides the theoretical framework for this new approach to perspective, the book presents a series of case studies ranging from innovative interpretations of classical authors and key moments in the history of art—from ancient painting, trompe l’oeil, and Brunelleschi’s experiment in Renaissance Florence—to the issue of perspective in the work of contemporary artists such as Robert Smithson.
The Share of Perspective will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in aesthetics, phenomenology, art history, and the history of sciences.
Foreword Martin Jay
Preface to the English Edition
1. Shared Perspectives
2. The Threat of Perspectives: Plato’s Image Theory
3. Florence, 1425: The Mirror Stage of Painting
4. Robert Smithson, at Lost Sight
5. Can Perspective Be a Symbolic Form? Revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer
Conclusion: In Praise of the Plural: For a New Perspectivism
Biography
Emmanuel Alloa is Professor of Philosophy and Chair for Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at the University of Fribourg. His books in English include Resistance of the Sensible World. An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty (2017) and Looking Through Images: A Phenomenology of Visual Media (2021).
"No other book brings together so many disciplinary fields, object domains, and historical periods in a consistently reasoned analytical overview that convincingly demonstrates the impossibility of any absolutistic generalisation. Between universalism and relativism, both untenable and damaging, Alloa succeeds in synthesizing what cannot be isolated, without unduly lumping together so many different aspects of visual experience. “Perspective”, usually considered subjectivist, and “sharing” as an appeal to community, are patiently led into a lively conversation, with philosophers and visual analysts, artists and students bringing in their different views. History and contemporaneity, also, are shown to be compatible, even in need of each other, so that conceptions that kept transforming throughout the centuries retain, not in stability but in movement, their relevance for the turbulent world of today. The itinerary through this amazingly rich treasure of knowledge and insight constantly stays captivating, for us today, eager to understand what we see better."
Mieke Bal, co-founder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA)
“Overcoming the alternative between universalism et relativism, Emmanuel Alloa makes a strong case for perspectivism and for singularity. Prepare for a philosophical, historical and artistical dive.”
Nicolas-Xavier Ferrand, La vie des idées, Collège de France
“This praise of perspective as a "sharing of the sensible" (Jacques Rancière), leads Alloa, equipped with the tools of phenomenology and social anthropology, to a long journey through the history of thought, architecture of thought, architecture, painting architecture, painting and the visual arts.”
Robert Maggiori, Libération
“A powerful plea why sharing viewpoints matters today.”
David Zerbib, Le Monde
