Cuts Without Knives: 4 Perspective as an Ontological Act

We have abandoned boundaries, relinquished separation, and recognised that distinction does not presuppose difference. Now we confront the central move: perspective is not epistemic; it is ontological.

To take a perspective is not merely to see, to know, or to interpret. It is to actualise a pattern of possibility, to bring forth relational forms that did not exist as discrete entities prior to the act. Perspective is not a lens imposed upon a pre-formed world; it is a gesture that co-individuates phenomenon and observer simultaneously.

This has radical consequences. If perspective is ontological:

• Observation and instantiation are inseparable. To see is to participate; to discern is to actualise.

• Multiplicity emerges not from pre-existing units but from co-actualised perspectives, each revealing potentialities in their own distinctive ways.

• The world is never “given” to us; it is performed through relational actualisation.

Contrast this with the conventional image. In ordinary thinking, perspective is a limitation: a point of view constrained by the world that exists independently. In this ontology, limitation dissolves. Perspective is creative, constitutive, and relational. It does not receive reality; it tunes the field of possibility, highlighting some patterns while leaving others latent.

Consider language, where this becomes palpable. A sentence is not a string of pre-formed words; a meaning is not a vessel into which we pour understanding. Each utterance brings forth distinctions, actualising relations within the semantic field. Perspective does not measure; it performs.

Similarly, in social systems, perspective is not merely an interpretation of interaction; it is the act through which social potentials co-emerge. Agents, events, and outcomes are not pre-formed; they are traces of perspectival cuts in relational fields.

To live with this understanding is to relinquish two illusions at once: that the world exists “whole” prior to engagement, and that knowledge or observation is passive. Perspective is not a mirror. It is a scalpel without a knife, a gesture that actualises rather than divides.

In the next post, we will take the final step in this phase: demonstrating that the field does not precede the cut, that the “background” is not a static stage but a dynamic network of potentialities co-emerging with perspective itself. This will prepare us for extending the logic of cuts across multiplicity, language, and mathematics.

For now, hold this vertigo: to take perspective is to participate in being itself. The act is not secondary; it is constitutive. The cut is not violence; it is creation.

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