From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Feb 12 2003 - 01:47:09 GMT
Erin,
Erin asked:
the only question I have for you
is why is it okay if Rorty asks us to do
both but contradictory if Pirsig suggests both?
Matt:
Well, it's not that Pirsig suggests both. Rorty asks us to hold the public
and private spheres apart and that we spend time doing both. Pirsig,
however, seems to suggest that by holding reality and justice in a single
vision, by conflating the public and the private, by deciding on what the
Good is first, that we can then affect real social change.
Now, take this passage from ZMM:
"My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the
world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that's
all." (Ch. 29)
If one interprets Quality like Platt wants to, as an absolute that we will
all agree on, then we first need to do metaphysics to find out what Quality
decisions are and then pattern our politics after them. This is, quite
obviously, what Pirsig goes on to do in Lila, so there is some back up for
this type of reading. However, if one follows my pragmatist reading where
we emphasize the ZMM-Pirsig and not the Lila-Pirsig, then one will be more
likely to interpret him as simply saying we need, as he says further on, "a
return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption."
You don't need to do metaphysics to do this.
Now, in case anybody thinks I am picking fights where none exists, my
evidence of the ambiguities are 1) the transition from ZMM to Lila, from
self-reliance and gumption to metaphysics and 2) his continued references
to how he disapproves of Phaedrus in ZMM even though Phaedrus, at the end
of ZMM, is the persona that wins out over the struggle for the body and
then continues on as the central character on Lila. After the above
passages on Quality decisions, Pirsig says, "Phaedrus went a different path
from the idea of individual, personal Quality decisions. I think it was a
wrong one ... He [Phaedrus] felt that the solution started with a new
philosophy, or he saw it as even broader than that--a new rationality...
Reason was no longer to be "value free." Reason was to be subordinate,
logically, to Quality...." That the MoQ gives us a new Reason is something
that many people interpret Pirsig as doing in Lila. That does seem to be
what he's trying to do. But that is Phaedrus' project, not the
post-metaphysical narrator's. And Phaedrus wins in the end and then we get
Lila. The intense ambiguity arises when we try and take the parts of ZMM
that the narrator espouses and say that those are good, too, along with the
metaphysics of Lila. There are several ways out from this ambiguity. We
can either deflate the importance of what the narrator says and emphasize
the Pirsig of Lila (you can do this by saying that the narrator's good
parts are suggestions for social level values), or deflate the imporatance
of what Phaedrus says and emphasize the Pirsig of ZMM.
My suggestion is that we read Pirsig as a pragmatist who thinks that the
American seperation of church and state is still a good thing (the Pirsig
that comes out strongest in ZMM), not as a metaphysician who thinks that we
need to do philosophy first (the one that comes out strongest in Lila). I
read Pirsig, when he describes Phaedrus in the Intro to the 25th
Anniversary Edition as "a mild-mannered hyperintellectual," as poking fun
at Phaedrus' (i.e. his own) delving into metaphysics. I take this as an
additional ambiguity. If the philosophical Answer to what Truth and Good
are is needed before we can get down to affecting change, then I would take
Phaedrus' project as of the upmost and serious importance. This little
poking of fun at Phaedrus says to me that Pirsig thinks the Metaphysics of
Quality is a little self-indulgent, an intellectual's pet project, possibly
not something that is for everyone. Self-indulgence is the province of the
private sphere. So, I then feel more justified in thinking that Pirsig
reads the MoQ, not as the Truth, but as his personal context for making
decisions, his personal route towards self-perfection.
Matt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Feb 12 2003 - 01:42:47 GMT