Picture this - that you are trekking through mountainous terrain, and that you know your goal, but are not sure how to reach it. This point counts - you have chosen the goal - this is not a forced march.
From time to time, you come to a promontory, from which you can see that you have made progress towards the goal, but from which you cannot have certainty about the next leg of the journey - of its efficacy in reaching your goal.
You are sure that you have made progress - this is a certainty. (Of course, you may not be sure every step of the way - I am omitting this, but not forgetting it - I am not excluding it.) You accept this as a certainty. Every means of verification available to you shows this. Even though you do not have that same certainty about the rest of the journey.
Certainty is not an absolute value, but it is no less “real” for that fact. A philosopher may be certain that he is on the right path, and that the point he occupies is instrumental to his ultimate goal - he may occupy a point of certainty without attaining ultimate certainty.
If he cannot ever stake this ground, some ground, he is merely wandering aimlessly. He might as well have stayed home.
He may see other trekkers along the way who are lost, who are merely wandering.
This is perspectivism.
Another metaphor.
When we philosophise, we may make the mistake of conceptually feezing objects (ideas about them, ideas themselves) in space/time. We may endeavor to make them stand still in an ever-changing universe, so that we may analyse them. But we may also make a series of conceptual snapshots, which we may, if the series is complete enough, re-animate. True, they are still a series of snapshots. Like a moving picture book. But these books only coherently animate if the series is complete.
We may also analyse objects of inquiry through different filters. These filters, we call knowledge - knowledge is not certainty, it is a toolbox, a method, a filter, in just the same way our senses are filters. Knowledge is not an opening into the world, but a screen from it. It alllows us to have a perspective. And we may be certain of what that perspective is, if we work hard enough at it. If we, say, analyse morality through the various filters of social, psychological, political, religious, historical knowledge, we get a picture that is closer to a hologram than a moving picture book. We do not simply watch an object travel through space/time, we conceptually orbit it as we watch.
This is perspectivism.
And this is why I reject epistemology, on perspectivist grounds. Knowledge is not a goal, but a tool pursuant to a goal. The goal is knowing our perspective.
Addendum - this post was inspired by my conversation with omar the other day (see Mundane Babble: Meeting Omar). We did more than socialise, it seems. Meeting forumfriends in RL has some benefits that I did not foresee.