From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Jan 27 2005 - 18:12:49 GMT
Ron,
Despite your riposte that it is my fault for constructing the rhetorical
situation that I would maintain you created (which is always a crafty move),
I would simply like to say that I think your view of me is based on a
misunderstanding. You asked before, "If I have said something you disagree
with, I will be more than happy to discuss it," but this is the brunt of the
problem. Everything you say is more or less agreeable--your impetus in
saying it, however, is apparently born out of disagreeing with something
I've said. But because you are saying things "in general," I have no idea
what that might be.
I've floundered about, trying to alleviate your fears of the picture I've
painted, but I really don't know what specifically you disagree with, so I
can't focus very well. I've never said I or anyone else must limit our
"philosophy to the 'Norm' or 'Paradigm' of previously held beliefs." I
would maintain that there's no other way to judge a belief except from your
previously held beliefs (what would be doing the judging, after all?), but
that doesn't exclude revolutionary philosophy that overturns previous
paradigms of doing things. The only thing I see that might be where we
disagree is the notion that we can strip off all of our beliefs, our
"prejudices" as you call them, before we can learn. This is what Hans-Georg
Gadamer called the Enlightenment's "prejudice prejudice." Once we dissolve
the notion of a core self, as Pirsig seems to do, then if your strip away
our beliefs, our prejudices, there's nothing left to do any learning.
There's no Lockean blank slate waiting for new impressions. We only move
from old to new, not empty to full.
So I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. When I do philosophy in the
broad sense of wisdom for making my way around the world, I take insight
wherever I may find it, be it reading Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature,
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, my experience with my ex-fiance, my
sister, a baseball game, or church. It doesn't matter.
Matt
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