RE: MD Pure experience and the Kantian problematic

From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Sun Jan 23 2005 - 12:32:11 GMT

  • Next message: Sam Norton: "Re: MD Pure experience and the Kantian problematic"

    Hi Sam

    Sam said:
    2. You said, re my argument that Pirsig has inherited a conceptual
    framework from William James, "your claim is not consistent with the
    biographical facts. May I point out that, in LILA, Pirsig claims to have
    only seriously read William James (and even then, selectively) after he
    had formulated the MOQ?"

    a. Influence doesn't have to be conscious to be present, which I think
    applies in this case because

    b. It would seem that the influence can be traced via Northrop. Anthony
    McWatt (in his 1997 lecture and his thesis) has done a lot of the
    groundwork. "Pirsig equates "Quality" with F.S.C. Northrop's "aesthetic
    continuum"" he writes, and he then quotes Northrop saying "most of the
    directly experienced field is vague and indefinite. Only at what William
    James termed its center is there specificity and definiteness." - so
    clearly Northrop is working with concepts derived from James.

    Paul:
    As I recall from my reading of Northrop, the only thing he explicitly
    takes from William James is just that which you have quoted. That is, he
    points to James as being different from other empiricists in that he
    doesn't regard all experience as discrete and differentiated but notes
    that there is an undifferentiated element which is as immediately
    apprehended as the differentiations. He then says that if one is being a
    thoroughgoing empiricist, this fact should not be shut out.

    Also, James talks of 'pieces of pure experience' which Pirsig takes
    issue with:

    "I think the MOQ would say there is no 'piece' of pure experience. By
    the time it has become a piece it is already a static pattern. To call a
    perceived book 'pure experience' is, I think, to slip back into a
    subject object metaphysical format." [Pirsig to McWatt, November 2001]

    So, if Pirsig has unconsciously inherited concepts from James he has, in
    this case at least, consciously distinguished the pure experience of the
    MOQ from the pure experience of James.

    Regards

    Paul

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