Le formiche di Nietzsche. Prospettivismo e coscienza animale

With the title “The Gay Science” Nietzsche empathizes the contrast between the joyfulness of poetry and the seriousness of philosophy. A gay science is a philosophy able to laugh at the pretension of absolute truth as part of itself. Nietzsche completes in this manner the critique of anthropocentrism that is the main theme of perspectivism. This paper aims at arguing on the relationship between the issue of perspectivism and the Nietzsche’s interpretation of the Kantian thing in itself. I consider Schopenhauer’s thought and Lange’s Geschichte des Materialismus as crucial sources of inspiration for the Nietzsche’s interpretation of Kant. Therefore, from Nietzsche’s point of view, the thing in itself is coextensive with its own phenomenon. Thus we cannot leave aside the phenomenal knowledge, that is, with Nietzsche’s words, the multiplicity of perspectives. This multiplicity has to include the individual perspective of every living being: for instance, that of the ant, to whom Nietzsche frequently refers.