Bo,
Bo: "There is a small difference between logic and rational, the former is
arguing from given premises - even if derived from subjective experience
(revelations even) while rational means an objective explanation."
You're stipulation between logic and rationality is a common enough one.
As it happens, even making that division, Rorty and I (and probably Pirsig
the Rhetorician) would still come out against both. I've already said
enough about logical argumentation and rationality as objectivity is the
Enlightenment foe that Rorty was in the process of overcoming in Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature and finally in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.
Bo: "You mean [Pirsig] shouldn't have written LILA? He would probably have
become a cult writer figure (like Salinger) but I'm glad he committed
himself."
No, I wouldn't say he shouldn't have written it. As I alluded to, there's
some good recontextualization in it. For instance, the narrative on Franz
Boas and American anthropology. Rather, he tended towards the systematic
in Lila and that is what I would have rather had him stay away from.
Bo: "You see some special Kantian philosophy, but in the MOQ versus SOM
context he was merely the climax of the SOM school...."
Your downplaying of the importance of Kant to Pirsig has its merits, but I
think it misses the important insights to Pirsig that reading Kant as
'Pirsig's greatest teacher and the man that Pirsig wanted so desparately to
overcome, yet ambivalently reinforces" has to offer. I can understand how
its important for the MoQ to shirk Kant (as the representative of SOM evil)
as soon as possible, but I believe it is disingenous to not note the
continuities between Kant and Pirsig that an alternative narrative has to
offer.
Kant was the first great Professional Philosopher, finally living Plato's
dream. He set the intellectual world into seperate spheres (Art, Science,
and Morality) and set Philosophy as their adjudicator. Philosophy was the
judge that was looked to when a problem arose. Is it ethical to clone
babies? Well, Philosophy, step in and tell us, since Morals and Science
are eternally seperate spheres.
Philosophers since Kant have either tried to reinforce these seperate value
spheres (like Hegel and Habermas) or they have tried to dissolve them (like
Nietzsche and Rorty). And here comes Pirsig. Pirsig admires Kant's
formidable defense of Philosophy, but smells something fishy. Pirsig
initially, in ZMM, dissolves the Kantian value spheres. That's where
Quality comes in. But then, in Lila, Pirsig, overcome by "Cartesian
Anxiety" (the inexplicable fear one experiences if your a foundationalist
without a foundation), erects a new heirarchy that, once again, enthrones
Philosophy. Science and Art and Morality are all connected now, but they
still must be adjudicated between. And the Philosophical interpretation of
the MoQ is what does the adjudication. Here is where the continuity is
seen between SOM (if that's what we use to designate the Kantian value
spheres) and MoQ.
So, in the narrative you would give, Bo, it may very well be that the
ground appears to have moved. But in this alternative narrative it appears
there is still ground left waiting to be moved (or in Rorty's case, dissolved).
Matt
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