Turn Every Page: Seeing Another's Perspective

“It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.”

George Eliot, Middlemarch

Earlier this week I was asked to help edit someone’s legal brief. Editing is an enjoyable activity. I get to learn about something new, but I also get to see it from a particular, and different, viewpoint. And by reading a person’s work, I also come to learn something about the person as well, almost as if we were in conversation.

It is part of our nature as social beings to be in dialogue with one another. When we wonder what it is to live a good life, for example, there would be many different opinions on the topic. And those opinions do not come solely from those around us. We need to take into account the lessons of history, the tradition that has come before. “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy. Books are, of course, our easiest way to access what has come before, to dialogue with the great minds of history, and to test our own thoughts and assumptions. In forming our own views, it is far better to take account of the tradition than to “submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” We should not, in other words, rely on those around us just because they are around us. We need to broaden our viewpoints, which means reading not only on a wide range of topics, but to read things new and things old as well.

Seeing issues and things from different viewpoints enriches our lives and actually enriches our experience of the thing itself. As one modern philosopher noted:

But when other perceivers are brought into the picture, the same identity takes on a deeper objectivity, a richer transcendence; I now see it not only as the thing I would see differently if I were to move this way and that, but also as the very same thing that is being seen, right now, from another perspective by someone else. The object is given to other viewers through manifolds that are different from those facing me, and I see the object precisely as being seen by others through viewpoints that I do not share. I realize that it presents facets to others that are not being presented to me, and hence these other facets are cointended by me, precisely as not my own. The identity of the thing is there not only for me but also for others, and therefore it is a deeper and richer identity for me. There is more ‘there’ there; the being and the identity of the thing are heightened by the introduction of intersubjective perspectives.

Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 31-32. “The being and the identity of the thing are heightened by the introduction of intersubjective perspectives”—that is, we gain something in our experience of a thing when other people are experiencing them as well. We understand that an object is being seen by many different people in many different ways, but someone else’s different perspective does not diminish my perception; it enhances it.

My perception of a thing becomes richer and fuller when others perceive it as well. And when we each offer a different perspective on something, we are more likely to get to the reality of the thing after taking into account all of our perceptions.

We should not be afraid of engaging with another’s perspective. We may learn something along the way, or come to appreciate an issue or object in a deeper way. Even if we change our opinion or someone says we were “wrong” in our initial perception, we come away having learned something and, I would argue, we come away more human for the interaction.

Remember to turn every page. Enjoy your weekend. Please let me know whether you need anything.

Best,

Aaron