From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Fri Apr 08 2005 - 22:13:58 BST
Dear Anthony,
On superficial reading (as I prefer writing to reading too much from others)
your criticism (6 Apr 2005 01:38:58 +0000) of Matt's attempt to dismantle
Pirsig's philosopher-philosophologist
distinction seems quite convincing. I do think, however, that the
distinction between philosophy/philosophology alias thinking and writing
oneself versus thinking and writing about what has been thought and written
by others is less sharp than Pirsig presented it.
Every thought expressed in words requires words that have been given most of
their meaning by their role in thoughts expressed by others. Every thought
and writing requires other thoughts and writings to be meaningful.
Nevertheless, I sympathize more with the idea that it is better to create
'own' thoughts than to repeat/reformulate those of others than with the idea
that formulating valuable new thoughts requires previous studying a lot of
thoughts from others. I prefer doing philosophy to studying philosophy.
I wonder what you think your original contribution to the MoQ is and to what
extent it required extensive study of Pirsig's writings (and possibly those
of MD contributors)?
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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