david,
thanks for the response. i think you revealed what is at the heart of
my difficulty with this.
>
> Like Roger, I'm not at all sure what Jamie's thesis is about. But the
> questions all point in a certain direction and hopefully I can see what
> they're getting at. The classic/romantic split is all but abandoned in
> LILA, as Roger described, but Pirsig doesn't contradict himself so much
> as expands and clarifies the ideas in ZMM. He wrote LILA because, as he
> put it, you can't have a metaphysics that consists of just one word;
> Quality. I guess its not really necessary to go through a whole new
> metaphysical system to address the issues of rhetoric, although it
> wouldn't hurt. Until then...
agreed. as i stated in my response to roger's most recent post, i see
rhetoric as the mediator of Quality. as a result, rhetoric is the skill
or craft, the "maintenace" of communication, so to speak. rhetoric is
the act of persuasion using the available means. it is contextual,
"experiential," and event. this isn't a very effective definition
because it confines rhetoric (and perhaps, as a result, restricts our
understanding of Quality).
>
> The word "techne" seems like a good place to start. Pirsig uses it to
> point out that the difference between art and technology wasn't always
> as distinct as it is in our time. He uses it to point out that the
> classic/romantic split has not always existed. He takes us back to a
> time and culture where creativity was creativity and it didn't matter if
> one were making a wagon wheel or carving a sculpture. In the same way,
> he points out in LILA that the words "rhetoric", "write" and "right" are
> all descendents of the Sanskrit "Rht", which could mean technically
> correct or morally proper or even both at the same time. Its a bit of a
> strech, but one could almost say that the classic/romantic split is
> portrayed as a difference in personality, taste and style. They're two
> ways of looking at the world. But in Lila Pirsig says, hey, this is
> bigger than I thought. Its not just about turning my artsy fartsy
> friends on to the joys of engine repair, this Quality thing is about the
> very structure and meaning of the universe. Like I said, its an
> exaggeration. The truth is that Pirsig's metaphysical system can be seen
> in both books.
agreed. i had forgotten about "Rht" in lila. i think, in terms of john
and the narrator in zmm, we're not supposed to think one "has it" and
the other doesn't. they each have a half of that "understanding" or
worldview. remember how the narrator at the deweese's doesn't know
anything about the conversation that john has with deweese and the other
guests? i guess the point i'm trying to make is that hip and square
need to come together or at least they need to understand each other
better. because of john's value rigidity, he could not open up to the
narrator's use of rhetoric to convince him of the Quality in motorcyle
maintenance. there is a union that i'm after of these two "worldviews"
just as there is a union of sorts between subject/object in zmm.
> Picture the moving train. Remember that image? If I understand it
> correctly the cutting edge at the front of the train represents Quality.
> It is the point where PRE-INTELLECTUAL REALITY IS DIRECTLY EXPERIENCED.
> What follows behind in the box cars are what is left in the wake of that
> cutting edge. Those box cars are full of all the "things" we learned
> from that direct experience. Again, LILA is a huge expansion and this
> epistemological idea is enlarged into an evolutionary cosmology. In the
> second book the pre-intellectual reality in called Dynamic Quality and
> is the creative force behind the evolution of everything, not just
> biological life and paintings. You could say that LILA has the box cars
> full of all phenomenal reality, all known or knowable things. Even
> individual persons and the fabric of time and space itself are made of
> the stuff in the box cars. This is static Quality. But, hey, you're just
> trying to get that thesis done.
yes, but this is good to keep in mind.
>
> Roger analogy of echos in the canyon underscores the primacy of the
> original experience. It portrays the echos as a dim reverberation of the
> real thing. And this is apt because Pirsig says the train's cutting
> edge, or Dynamic Quality, is the PRIMARY EMPIRICAL REALITY. The edge is
> where its at. The front of that train is not only where the creative
> people like to be, its the point of creation itself. Using LILA language
> we'd say that the Romantic is more Dyanamic. The Romantic is more
> creative and more open to direct experience. And the Classically minded
> are more concerned with static quality, its correct form and structure.
> They emphasize what has been learned from experience and appreciate its
> value.
exactly.
> I've a friend who teaches English and Literature at a small college and
> he also writes fiction. He describes the first draft in composition as
> an act of vomiting. "Just puke it up", he says. In spite of the gruesome
> image he uses, he's talking about Dynamic Quality. He realizes that the
> creative process can't really be constrained by the rules of spelling
> and grammer. That comes later, as Jamie pointed out. That's when the
> Classical mechanic gets busy to make sure the thing really works.
i had an english professor who called it "diarrhea of the mouth." he
would only bestow this choice epithet if the writer had turned in the
stream of consciousness "prewriting" without any revision. but what
your friend is describing is exactly what i'm trying to say about
phaedrus and his teaching practices.
>
> But we hope that there is an artist and a scientist inside each of us.
> And in LILA Pirsig essentially says that we are composed of static
> quality and that's good, but we are only free and alive to the extent
> that we are open to that cutting edge. We see this conclusion in both
> books. In zmm the resolution occurs as their helmuts are removed and the
> re-united father and son speed down the road feeling all the wind and
> hearing all the noises that were previously muffled. At the end of LILA
> Pirsig leaves the hurricane filled rivers and lakes and sails out into
> the great wide Ocean. In both cases we get this sense of freedom and
> open-ness. I don't even remember if there was ever a mention of any
> destinations ahead. Trains, bikes and boats. Whatever. Just keep it
> moving.
precisely. one critique that i have had about zmm is that it encourages
pigeonholing characters in the book and people in our lives. these
"labels" are just as dangerous as the limited rational world of the
church of reason that pirsig is railing against. the beauty of the
book, though, is that we get this explanation from a fractured narrator
who labels people and himself. this all changes when he is reunited
with phaedrus at the end. this, i think is the artist/scientist,
subject/object, etc. union you describe above.
thanks for comments. any new thoughts are appreciated.
jamie
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