Hi John B, Angus.
Wittgenstein's exact words were: "Philosophy is a battle against the
bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language" (Philosophical
Investigations, paragraph 109).
Hence his method, which I tried to outline in my post of Sat Oct 06 2001, of
investigating the depth grammar of our language - in other words what we are
actually doing when we talk - in order to stop philosophical confusions
taking hold.
Angus wrote recently:
Wittgenstein though would predate Pirsig. His banner quote "Don't think
look" would almost directly correspond to "kill intellectual patterns and
follow DQ."
Much of what Angus has said about Wittgenstein I agree with (and I don't
want to clog up the MoQ forum with discussions on the relative merits of
Wittgenstein interpretation, a highly contentious philosophological field if
ever there was one) but there is something in what Angus said here that
needs to be teased out a little, as its relevant to the MoQ's status.
Wittgenstein saw (most) metaphysics as intellectually broken, and a snare
for the intellectually unwary. But he didn't discard all intellectual
patterns wholesale, which I think is what Angus seems to be implying. We're
back with the question from the Beauty/DQ thread, of whether staring at the
sky is sufficient for enlightenment and changing the world. I agree with
John B when he says "I am responding to this current thread in discussion
not so much because I
am totally at odds with it - I am, after all, an artist - but because it is,
IMHO, so pathetically inadequate to deal with my issues and concerns.
Because it is a half truth, and has been around a long while, and because
there is indeed a lot of "anti-rational rubbish being propagated by
humanities professors at today's universities", it sounds good, but it does
not deliver. If it were true, Pirsig would not have written his books, and
this forum would not exist. Instead he would be still laying out there in
the field, staring at the sun. Or more probably, still be at Benares Hindu
University."
In my view Wittgenstein's work was (throughout his life, this is consistent
in early and late W) concerned to change our focus from futile abstractions,
to a thoroughly moral engagement with the world. Consequently I would argue
that Wittgenstein is on John B's side in this debate - with Pirsig - and not
with those who wish to discard intellectual patterns in pursuit of mystical
experience/DQ as an end in itself.
Sam
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