Just a general note to your thoughts about Dewey and Pirsig. I think the
connection comes via William James who was an important influence in Dewey's
thought and whose pragmatism most of all is transmuted and transmitted by Dewey
- so much so that some of James' later works, involving less pragmatic matters,
are less attended to - because of Dewey and the Chicago school of pragmatists
("instumentalists") who so focus on James' earlier works.
I like both, as well as Pirsig, in their lively "philosophizing" rather than
"philosophologizing".So, David, I have thought and do think along similar
lines. (BTW, this is the first email I've read of yours, so with me there's no
previous history.)
David wrote:
...Actually I think Prisig made a very good job of bring together, in
> a way which one wouldn't otherwise have thought of, the thought of the
> American Pragmatist John Dewey with that of Plato, Heraclitus, and Buddhism
> (although I know he doesn't mention Dewey). It's all in the conception of
> the meaning and scope of 'technology'.
>
> It seems to me that in his talk of satisfaction Dewey is the nearest to what
> Prisig was saying about the metaphysical reality of 'quality', and that
> perhaps Dewey has just seeped into Prisig through some common folklore, or
> perhaps the American system of education, or just through their both being
> fundamentally right. Overcoming the rationalist/romantic divide was Dewey's
> central concern as it is Prisig's. Likewise the attitude to technical
> knowledge as a moral activity. Likewise the compatibility of a body of
> knowledge with the actual process of teaching it. I could go on.
>
> Anybody thought on similar lines? Anyone read, say, Dewey: 'The Reflex Arc
> Concept in Behaviour?' (I feel at liberty to ask this, now that someone has
> mentioned Hegel at me)
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