From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Mar 19 2005 - 15:34:44 GMT
Hey Ham,
I figured you might've been confused back then after I read some of the
other things you were saying about essentialism and such. But then, a lot
of people were confused. What I was disappointed in was not that Pirsig
didn't have a suitable epistemology, and certainly not Pirsigians' disavowal
of a need for an epistemology, but rather their holding of certain positions
that, to me, seemed to require them to have a suitable epistemology. You
mistook my demand that certain positions must provide answers for certain
questions for the demand that you make: all positions must provide answers
to certain questions.
When you say that you're sure you can find Pirsig using Quality (or Value)
as an essence, I'm positive you can and could give you at least 10 more
where, if he doesn't do exactly that, what he is saying would require it.
My overall project with Pirsig has taken several linked forms. 1) I'm
attempting to reconstruct Pirsig's philosophy. 2) I'm arguing that his
philosophy takes two basic, contradictory positions (one pragmatist (which
you may take to be the same as logical positivism, despite them being at
odds with each other from the very beginning, but I certainly do not), the
other Platonic/traditional/etc.). 3) I'm arguing that the spirit of the
letter is on the side of the pragmatist passages and so I'm also attempting
a reconstruction of Pirsig's philosophy sans the "bad passages."
So, based on that, my "joining" your challange basically means that I would
argue that its no challange at all and I would spend most of my time dodging
it. I'm positive you wouldn't take my philosophy seriously because, in your
eyes, it would turn into the ashes of relativism or nihilism (as it does in
the eyes of Scott, too). Which is why I said I wasn't going to say
anything. The question for us is how we would have a dialogue about the
above, very general matters without immediately begging the question over
each other. As Scott mentioned, the reason we keep missing the elephant in
the room is because we think the elephant is all in your head. To my mind,
the only dialogue we could have, just as I think its one of the few
dialogues Scott and I can have, is a metaphilosophical one, meaning we'd
have to talk about what we want philosophy to do, what kind of people we
want to be.
If you want my general position on Pirsig given the above three project
points, I suggest reading "Confessions of a Fallen Priest" in the moq.org
Forum. It outlines my general project and attempts to answer some of the
most obvious objections (like nihilism, relativism, irrationalism).
Oh, and as a philosopher, I can be quite sanguine about the future of
philosophy as "a literary art form reflecting the history of man's culture"
because that's all I think philosophy has ever been, despite its pretensions
of believing otherwise. I am, afterall, a Rortyan through and through.
Matt
p.s. By the way, since its quite apparent to you that Pirsig was (at least
some of the time) an essentialist, or spoke (at least some of the time) like
an essentialist, could please explain that to everyone else (who isn't, say,
Scott or Sam, since they already agree)? Because everyone else thinks I'm
seeing ghosts. To me, the easiest thing has been convincing people of
Pirsig's pragmatism. The hardest part has been convincing them of
pragmatism's consequences. Or, to put it another way, its been easy to
convince them that they shouldn't need to answer traditional questions, but
its been hard to convince them that they are still being too traditional.
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