World and perspective
Dioramics begins with a simple observation with far-reaching philosophical implications: the world we experience always appears from a particular perspective. We do not perceive from a position outside the world, but as embodied beings who are already part of it. What presents itself to us appears within an interweaving of sensory capacities, bodily involvement, memories, expectations, language and culture.
The term diorama designates this interweaving: the world as it appears as meaningful within a particular situation. A diorama is therefore not simply an individual worldview, a collection of beliefs someone holds. It also encompasses the largely unspoken and unnoticed conditions under which anything can become visible, intelligible or relevant at all.
These conditions are not exclusively personal. They are shaped in part by biological characteristics, social practices, cultural distinctions and historical circumstances. At the same time, every person has a history of their own and finds themselves in a unique situation. A diorama is thus neither an entirely private construction nor a general and unchanging framework that is the same for everyone.
The impossibility of an absolute standpoint
The idea that perception is perspectival has a long history. It can be recognised, among other places, in the perspectivist tradition, in thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and José Ortega y Gasset. Each in his own way challenged the idea that knowledge can only truly be knowledge when it leaves the perspective of the knower behind.
In his reflections on perspective, Bertrand Russell likewise makes clear that an object presents itself differently from different positions. A table, for example, has no single appearance that can simply be identified as the appearance of the table. Its perceived colour, shape and size vary with, among other things, the observer’s position and the lighting conditions.
It does not follow, however, that the table is nothing more than a collection of personal opinions. The distinction between an object and its modes of appearance remains important. Perspectival differences can be investigated, related to one another and sometimes explained. It is precisely the connections between different perspectives that can deepen our knowledge.
Dioramics takes up this idea but broadens its scope. The question concerns not only the spatial position from which an object is perceived, but also the space of meaning within which it appears. A table may appear as a piece of furniture, an antique, a commodity, an obstacle or the place where a family gathers. These meanings cannot simply be read off the table, yet neither are they arbitrary: they arise within concrete human practices.
From the standpoint of Dioramics, an absolute standpoint — a view of reality that is no longer itself a perspective — is unavailable. This is not a claim that nothing exists outside our experience. It is a statement about the limits of our knowledge: even when we try to transcend our situation, our approach remains situated.
Phenomenology: the world as it appears
Dioramics has an affinity with phenomenology, particularly its attention to the ways in which things present themselves to us. Phenomenology asks not only what exists, but also how something appears and under what conditions it becomes recognisable as something.
An important concept here is intentionality: consciousness is generally consciousness of something. Perceiving, remembering, fearing and desiring have a directedness. An experience is not merely an inner event detached from its world; it is in some way engaged with what is perceived, remembered, feared or desired.
In Edmund Husserl’s work, the lifeworld also takes a central place: the everyday world in which we move and which we usually take for granted. Scientific theories do not arise outside that world, but within a human existence in which things already present themselves as meaningful.
Martin Heidegger radicalises this involvement by understanding the human being primarily in terms other than a subject confronting a world of objects. For him, human existence is always already being-in-the-world. We often first encounter things not as neutral objects, but within practical contexts: a door to walk through, a chair to sit on, a tool to do something with.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in turn, emphasises that this involvement is bodily. The body is not only an object we possess, but also the lived capacity through which a world becomes accessible to us. Our perspective is not an abstract standpoint; it is rooted in a body that can move, act and perceive.
Dioramics is not a summary of phenomenology, nor can it simply be equated with it. It does, however, share its attention to the world as it is lived, before that world is reduced to a collection of neutral objects or inner representations.
The role of language and interpretation
We encounter the world not only through our senses and practical activities; we also understand it. Language plays an important role in this. The words and distinctions available to us make certain experiences nameable and bring particular connections to the fore.
The hermeneutic tradition — the philosophy of understanding and interpretation — emphasises that understanding never begins from nothing. We always already approach what we encounter with expectations and presuppositions. Hans-Georg Gadamer speaks in this connection of the historical conditioning of our understanding: we stand within traditions that help determine which questions we can ask and what appears to us as a possible answer.
This need not mean that language forms a closed prison. Presuppositions can become visible, be questioned and change. It is precisely in encounters with what is unfamiliar, unexpected or resistant that the limits of our existing understanding can come to light.
From a dioramic perspective, a diorama is therefore not a fixed framework that determines experience once and for all. It is a changing configuration of relations. Experiences are incorporated within it, but can also put it under pressure and transform it.
Construction and resistance
The idea that the world we live in is partly shaped by our ways of perceiving and understanding immediately raises a question: do we construct our world?
The answer depends on what is meant by constructing. If it means that meaning is not given independently of a context of perception and involvement, then Dioramics has a constructivist dimension. An object, for example, appears as money, a tool or a work of art only within practices in which such distinctions have meaning.
But if construction means that the world is a product of an individual consciousness, or that every interpretation is equally good, Dioramics does not follow that line. Our possibilities for giving meaning are not unlimited. Things, events and other people can elude our expectations. They can correct, surprise and contradict us.
The distinction between reality and world can be helpful here. World refers to the interrelated whole within which things appear to us and acquire meaning. Reality refers to what is not simply exhausted by that whole: to what cannot be fully determined by our interpretations.
This distinction must be handled carefully. After all, we have no direct access to a reality wholly independent of any mode of appearance. Even when we speak about that reality, we do so through concepts and experiences. Reality is therefore not presented here as a second, hidden world that we might discover behind appearances. Rather, the distinction marks a limit to our claim: our world is not necessarily the measure of everything that is real.
Perspectivism and truth
If all knowing is perspectival, what remains of truth?
One possible answer is relativism: what is true depends entirely on the perspective. But that conclusion does not automatically follow from the observation that knowledge is situated. That someone sees something from a particular position does not mean that what is seen exists only for that person, or that every description is equally convincing.
Perspectives can be compared. Claims can be examined for coherence, supporting evidence and consequences. Scientific methods, for example, make it possible to partly correct individual limitations through systematic observation, repeatability, criticism and collaboration. Science, too, remains a human practice with its own concepts and methods, but those very methods can yield knowledge that extends beyond an individual impression.
Dioramics therefore does not ask us to abandon truth, but to be cautious about the idea that truth would only be possible from an absolute standpoint without perspective. Knowledge can be limited and situated, yet reliable. It can be improved without ever becoming complete.
At the same time, precisely how different perspectives relate to truth remains an open philosophical problem. Dioramics does not solve that problem by using the word perspective; rather, it brings the problem into view.
The other and the shared world
A diorama is not necessarily a closed individual world. People can speak and act together and direct their attention towards what they share. We recognise the same street, read the same book or discuss the same event, even when it has a different meaning for each of us.
This sharing is neither self-evident nor ever complete. Words can be shared while the experiences they refer to diverge. We may think we understand one another and later discover that we meant different things. But difference does not rule out understanding. Understanding can grow precisely through taking difference seriously.
The other appears from my perspective, but is not exhausted by it. Another person can surprise me, contradict me and bring into view something that had escaped my attention. In that encounter, a diorama can change.
The place of Dioramics
Dioramics stands at the intersection of phenomenology, perspectivism and hermeneutics. It shares these traditions’ attention to the situatedness of experience and knowledge. At the same time, it uses the image of the diorama to place a question of its own at the centre: how does the interrelated whole within which a world appears to someone arise and change?
This question has both a philosophical and a personal dimension. It concerns the relationship between perception, meaning and reality, but also the concrete worlds in which people live: the possibilities they see, the taken-for-granted certainties that sustain them and the limits they may only notice when those limits begin to shift.
Dioramics does not claim to offer a definitive answer to what reality ultimately is. It investigates how worlds appear, how they are shared and how they can change — without losing sight of the fact that this investigation itself also takes place from within a particular world.