From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sat Nov 16 2002 - 00:57:08 GMT
Platt,
>A harsh charge indeed. Care to back it up with some evidence? I think it
>was Struan who made a similar charge some time ago and he, a self-
>proclaimed philosopher, was unable to back it up with specific
>passages from previous thinkers, 18th century or otherwise. Maybe you
>can do better.
Well, actually I was thinking my tone was harsh, not the charge. Of
course, I have nothing at stake with Pirsig being more or less original;-)
As for the evidence, it is indeed quite a task. I recently set-up a
project for myself to write annotations for ZMM. That's one of the places
I was hoping to bring out these "allegations." I was also hoping to write
some comparisons of Pirsig and Kant, who I think are more alike then many
here think. I've set some of these things out in the past (see below).
What you are asking for is a bigger task then you may think (or not, you
may be snickering at the work I'll have to do). To do it right, I'll have
to sketch the contours of the history of philosophy, tracing out the things
they thought were problems and how they changed over time. I'll have to
find passages from a whole range of philosophers in the past and place them
in these contours. It takes work to track specific passages down. I'll
also have to find passages from a whole range of philosophers from the
recent past all the way up to the present. This way I'll be able to chart
the movement of contemporary philosophy and then we'll be able to see which
context (based on the kind of language Pirsig uses and the kinds of things
he sees as problems) Pirsig fits in best.
This all takes time and its time that, this being the middle of a school
semester, I don't have right now. Granted, I plan on doing this, but it
will have to wait and it will probably be a project, if I'm going to do it
right, that will last me a long time and take a lot of research.
Now, the funny thing is that you have to be prepared to do the same thing.
You see, you say, "Show me the evidence for saying that Pirsig better fits
in the 18th C." Well, I'm quite validated in saying the opposite right
back, "Show me the evidence for saying that Pirsig better fits in the 20th
C. (or, at the least, doesn't fit in better in the 18th C.)" I'm pretty
sure that nobody at this site right now has the necessary background in
intellectual history to be able to make either argument, or at least to do
it right.
So, until you (or anybody else) provide the historical scholarship that
everyone can review, seeing all the evidence and the like, we're both in
the same boat. I can sketch small contours and try and point in the
direction I will be heading. But I'm pretty sure that Pirsigian
scholarship is going to be a lifelong task for myself, one I'm fully
prepared to undertake, and this specific answer will be a while yet coming.
But, I will leave with these passages from past posts where I sketch some
comparisons with Kant:
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