Introduction: On Judgment

As a result of the recent interest in all kinds of knowledge-based and creative forms of human production and innovation — in many cases under labels such as “knowledge management,” “organization learning,” or similar terms — the forms of knowing being thereby mobilized are almost instrumental and devoid of controversy. After centuries of scientific and technological development, the human mind is accustomed to thinking of knowledge as what is silently, almost effortlessly, being developed and translated into commodities and practices. The triumph of the sciences and the unprecedented growth of new advanced technologies tend to overshadow the fact that there is rarely, if ever, any knowledge per se, pure, undisputed, ready-at-hand. In most cases, knowing the world means imposing a certain perspective on it — a perspective that is of necessity a view from somewhere, as already implied in the definition of the term “perspective.” Friedrich Nietzsche spoke of knowledge as always of necessity being perspectival, that is, as already being embedded in certain norms, beliefs, ideologies, interests; in short, not being the pristine and primordial form of knowing that its spokesmen in many cases claim. Michel Foucault’s deeply Nietzschean view of knowledge as regimes of power further stressed that knowledge is always a vector as it has both force and direction.