Hi Struan:
You wrote:
“Morality is entirely concerned with the goodness or badness of human
behavior.”
You sound like Rigel. Of him Pirsig wrote:
“To answer him you have to go all the way back to fundamental meanings of
what is meant by morality, and in this culture there aren’t any fundamental
meanings of morality. There are only old traditional social and religious
meanings and these don’t have any real intellectual base. They’re just
traditions.”
Just as Einstein redefined time and space, Pirsig broadened the meaning of
morality to give it a firmer intellectual base. His new definition includes both
the “utility” good of 2+2=4 (intellectual value pattern) and the “moral” good of
helping an old lady across the street (social pattern of value).
“Morality is not a simple set of rules. It's a very complex struggle of
conflicting patterns of values. This conflict is the residue of evolution. As new
patterns evolve they come into conflict with old ones. Each stage of evolution
creates in its wake a wash of problems. It's out of this struggle between
conflicting static patterns that the concepts of good and evil arise.”
Contrary to your opinion, this new definition can contribute much to debates
about social morality as demonstrated by many examples in “Lila” including
the story of the brujo and (my favorite) Pirsig’s analysis of 60’s Hippies.
Reading your post of 13 June reminded me of this passage from “Lila”--
“Like the stuff Rigel was throwing at him this morning, the old Victorian
morality. That was entirely within that one code—the social code. Phaedrus
thought that code was good enough as far as it went, but it really didn't go
anywhere. It didn't know its origins and it didn't know its own destinations,
and not knowing them it had to be exactly what it was: hopelessly static,
hopelessly stupid, a form of evil in itself.”
If you want to limit morality to the social domain like Rigel, fine. I think
Pirsig’s expanded version is better, i.e., closer to the moral value of truth. Far
from being “deeply flawed” as you claim, the MoQ frees morality from its
hopelessly static definition and, once freed, gives us an entirely new view of
reality.
Platt
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