Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility: 9 Perspectival Turns: Nietzsche, Phenomenology, and the Pluralisation of Construal

Following the historical and material re-cuts of Hegel and Marx, the late 19th and early 20th centuries introduced a decisive pluralisation of possibility. Nietzsche and the phenomenologists shifted construal from universal or systemic frameworks toward perspectival, embodied, and existential modes of engagement. Possibility was no longer only historical, structural, or rational; it became intensely personal, situated, and relational.

Nietzsche reframed the terrain of potential through the concept of perspectivism. Truth, value, and being are not absolute, nor given in structures beyond life; they are interpretations, contingent on standpoint, drive, and creative force. The horizon of possibility is thus plural: multiple, overlapping, and often conflicting. The individual is no longer a passive recogniser of universal order but an active creator, navigating constraints and opportunities, affirming or transfiguring potential through choice and will.

Phenomenology, particularly in the work of Husserl and later Heidegger, grounded construal in embodied experience. Possibility arises in the lived world — Lebenswelt — as the interplay between perception, intentionality, and horizon. The world is disclosed relationally: objects, events, and meanings appear to consciousness in ways inseparable from the embodied, temporal, and practical situation of the subject. Possibility is thus enacted, contingent, and inherently perspectival: it is experienced through the situated lens of being-in-the-world.

Together, these perspectival turns reveal that possibility is inseparable from standpoint and embodiment. Construal is no longer merely a matter of abstract categories, historical structures, or dialectical unfolding. It is contingent, provisional, and existentially grounded. The pluralisation of possibility challenges prior claims to universality, emphasising the diversity of viewpoints, the situatedness of knowledge, and the creative capacities of human beings to navigate, shape, and transfigure their own horizons.

In this context, reality is not a fixed domain to be discovered but a relational space in which beings interpret, act, and bring forth potentialities. Nietzsche and phenomenology thus inaugurate a new register of construal: one in which possibility is plural, contingent, embodied, and existential, opening the way for the linguistic, structural, and posthuman reconceptions of the 20th and 21st centuries.