From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 26 2002 - 21:17:02 GMT
Mari,
Mari:
When does philosophy move ( morph ) from "servant" to "master"?
Matt:
Philosophy moves from servant to master when one picks up the Platonic
project of trying to hold "reality" and "justice" in a single vision. The
simple history lesson here is that in The Republic, Plato attempts to find
out what Justice is in-and-of-itself. He tries to find out what the
contours of Reality are and, by using his dialectic to ascertain the Forms,
he attempts to find out where and what Justice is in Reality. So, by using
philosophy, Plato could find out what the best political set-up is. That's
philosophy-as-master. Following Rorty, I think the best thing to do is to
keep reality and justice seperate. Our search for "reality" becomes our
private search for self-perfection and our search for "justice" becomes our
public search for the alleviation of cruelty. But the choice of abandoning
the Platonic project isn't going to be made by argument. I can never offer
you anything other than a circular argument for holding reality and justice
seperate. The key to this Rortyan move is simply meditating on the history
of philosopy and drawing a moral. Rorty and the pragmatists think that the
moral is that its about time to move on to something more worthwhile.
Philosophy-as-servant would be something like the generation of a multitude
of descriptions to help find better descriptions then the ones we have.
This is what Judith Shklar did in her book The Faces of Injustice.
Reflecting on the history of attempts to write a "theory of justice," she
suggested that this white, male-centric activity should be changed to a
search for a theory of injustice. Thus she abandoned the search for some
Platonic Form of Justice, which would inform us as to what is good and
fair, and instead focused on trying to sketch the contours of our
contemporary forms of injustice in the hopes of attempting to mitigate and
alleviate that injustice.
On the adoption of other people's points of view, I suggest looking up the
"Confessions of a Fallen Priest" thread beginning in July (particularly my
reply to John B. on July 30, the last two paragraphs). Your looking at
someone who would like nothing better than finding better descriptions and
vocabularies then the one I'm using. This is at the heart of the term
"ironist."
Mari said:
"[Matt:]...what this discussion site was designed for...." is what?
Matt:
In the "About" link at MOQ.org it says:
"MOQ.org is a forum for the discussion of Robert M Pirsig's Metaphysics
of Quality. Our objective is to help visitors to this site develop their
personal understandings of the metaphysical nature of the universe
through study and discourse on the Metaphysics of Quality, related
theories and empirices and empirical experience."
While I'm not sure what "empirices" are, I take the gist of this
description to be that we are here to discuss Pirsig for our personal
development and understanding.
Mari said:
It seems to me that on some level to some degree "philosophy" is the
underpinning of everything that everyone does. Steve said: " Everyone is
spiritual whether they know it or not if the universe is based on value not
material" Even an atheist has a philosophy that becomes the spirit of his
beliefs and shows up in much if not all of what he is/does.
Matt:
While I agree in making philosophy fairly ubiquitous, I shy away from the
word "underpinning." Following Sellars, Rorty and I take philosophy to be
"an attempt to see how things, in the broadest possible sense of the term,
hang together, in the broadest possible sense of the term." So, to the
degree that things hang together in some fashion for all people, everyone
has a philosophy. What that is can either be enuciated by them or inferred
by others. This "hanging together of things" can also be called a person's
"final vocabulary." For a further elaboration on final vocabularies, I
suggest the "Confessions" thread referred to earlier. I hesitate from
using the word "underpinning" because of its foundationalist conotations,
which makes it begin to look like metaphysics, something pragmatists
eschew. (For extended coverage of why pragmatists don't like
metaphysics-as-a-foundation, I suggest my reply to Scott and Platt on Oct.
20 in the "Pirsig, the MoQ, and SOM" thread. The follow-ups by Wim may
also help clarify the issue.)
On the expectations of others, I do think there are those who come to this
site looking for a broad social movement. I'm thinking of people like Paul
Goddard who said, "Intellectuals have a moral responsibility to guide and
shape society for the better, so unless ideas feed back into a static
social form ... I feel it is largely pointless." ("MOQ For Dummies," Dec 9)
This is the Platonic project of holding "reality" and "justice" in the
same vision. It also reflects what I once called the Sallust-Arendt
continuum (in a post that Platt had to send for me on Sept 24). I spent a
good deal of time in that post defending the split between the private and
public spheres. Paul would side with those who would collapse the private
into the public. If philosophy is not useful for society, then it is
pointless. Pragmatists, on the other hand, would hold that philosophy
might have two functions, a private and public one. The usefulness of a
discourse would then change depending on what sphere you were engaging in.
I have been arguing that this site should be viewed as pursuing primarily
the private project of self-perfection. So, if you find the discourse here
interesting and useful, then the site is useful. If not, then not, but
only for you.
I'm also thinking of people like Rudy and John W. (and it would appear,
you, Mari) who called for more concrete applications of the MoQ. My only
suggestion is that people who want more concrete applications of the MoQ
start supplying more concrete applications of the MoQ. I'm sure there are
a lot of people out there who would want that. However, because I'm not
trying to hold "reality" and "justice" in the same vision (which Rudy,
John, Paul, and Pirsig are trying to do), I see no problem in discussing
various features of Pirsig's philosophy without reference to "specific
current issues relating to legislation, court decisions, law enforcement,
prisons, medical issues and decisions,
tribalism vs. one-worldism, poverty, spiritual longings, racial prejudice,
Al Qaeda, capitalism,
personal freedoms in times of terrorism, parenting, government clean-air
regulations, the social effects of technology, inequalities in income
distribution, school vouchers, etc." (Rudy, "MOQ For Dummies", Dec 15) I
also see no problem with people who _do_ want to discuss Pirsig's
philosophy with reference to "specific current issues." I simply think its
a matter of each person deciding what they want to talk about and then
finding someone who wants to talk with them about it. That's what this
Discussion Site is for.
Matt
p.s. You'll no doubt notice the extreme number of other posts referenced in
this post. The reason for this is that I've elaborated at great length
about these ideas before, at the expense of other people's patience, so I
hesitate to recapitulate them at the moment. I do, however, want to
converse with you on these things if you want to, so if you have more
specific questions about philosophy, metaphysics, the private/public
distinctions, Rorty, ironism, etc. I would be more than happy to discuss
them afresh. I just want you to be aware of what you're getting into ;-)
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