From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Apr 19 2005 - 20:59:38 BST
Robin,
Robin said:
But why would I want to support my claim via the philosophologist issue, it
seems to me that you desperatly want to be a philosophologist and since you
keep searching for a philisophologistic way to explain the ideas of people.
Matt:
Oh, well, I thought we were talking about Pirsig, too. But okay, we can
just talk about a distinction you want to make between philosophers, who
"want to find a better way," and "philosophologers," who "want to find
eternal truth." (I thought your "philosophologer" was just a consistent
malaprop, but maybe you were subtly tipping us off that you were going off
in your own direction.) In this case, there are a couple of consequences, I
would think:
If the distinction between philosopher and philosophologer is an issue of
self-image ("Do you think you are discovering eternal truths or creating
better ways of thinking?"), then it is much easier to divide them. Its the
same distinction as that between, as I called them, "universalists" and
"historicists" or between, as you pointed out, "Platonists" and "Sophists."
When you're dealing with self-image, its easier to spot your prey. However,
then you've disjoined the distinction completely from issues of practice,
like how they write (historically? non-?) or how original they are or if
they get mad at people for not believing their beliefs. _Unless_ you
further stipulate such issues into it, which means my last post becomes more
relevant, because I think such issues as those swing free of the self-image
issue.
For instance, if you think the difference between a philosopher and a
philosophologer is the above difference, turning on the possibility of
eternal truth, then you don't get to call me a philosophologer. I am most
avowedly not a believer in Eternal Truth. The few times you start to
suggest such a thing, as above, you start equivocating into the practice of
what we do, how I write for instance. You think I write
"philosophologistically," but what is that? Given all of the difficulties
I've raised about the distinction, it isn't clear to me how you're using it.
It looks like the old way, meaning something like I write like an academic
or scholastically. Which is true. Which is why I wanted to talk about
writing style, the actual practice of philosophers. Because I don't think
it matters a whit to creativity, though Pirsig and you apparently do.
I'm not trying to prove you wrong. However, I thought we were in an
dialectical argument, exchanging viewpoints, arguments, evidence,
interpretations, etc. If you bring up something from the history of
philosophy to contextualize your point, I would think it warranted for my
riposte to contest that context if I think its wrong. If I'm making it
sound as if you "just read a book," its because what you say resonates in
the history of philosophy and part of my style is to point out those
resonances. If it seems like I'm "throwing another book" at you to "prove
you wrong," that's because, after setting up the resonations in the history
of philosophy, I can make my own point in that context and then make the
complete circle back to what you said and make my point directly applicable
to you. That's an issue of style.
Now, to put the issue plainly, do you wanna' make something of it? Pirsig
does. Most other people do, too. What we make of it is the question. How
is the way I write degenerate, or derivative in a way that others are not?
Because I write with an eye towards history? I have responses to that.
(For instance, you say, "The philosopher i was talking about has an eye
inwards towards his own thought, his eye is certainly not towards a
history." My remarks in the last few weeks have been to blur the
distinction between looking "inwards" towards your "own thought" and "out"
towards "history.") Because I'm unoriginal? I have responses to that.
Because I'm argumentative (that's a possibility that plausibly cropped up in
your last reply)? I have responses to that. But I'm just not clear about
what you're trying to say and why you're saying it, what you're opposed to
and what you're trying to do.
Matt
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