From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Nov 01 2005 - 21:20:36 GMT
Hey Ian,
Ian said:
Is all fair in love and war, water off a duck's back ... or should we be
rejecting the kind of direct personal negative statements in Mark's post as
unacceptable, however incidental they are or however well intentioned the
central point or aim ?
Matt:
This is a question that's been floating in the background for a long time
and its one that many of us "old warriors" have taken a position on, if only
in passing, so if history is a guide (and opinions haven't changed
substantially) I can probably guess most people's vote. And oddly enough,
it cuts across most philosophical grains. So far as I've found, whether or
not we should be nice to people has very little to do with what we think
about Pirsig. However, in a moment I'll start linking our attitudes about
ad hominem attacks to various philosophical figures.
My "Open Letter" in the Forum contains some comments about the kind of
atmosphere we find ourselves in (including two explanations of it) and my
opinion on what people should do when confronted by it. I won't go into the
history of various participants and I won't reproduce the "Open Letter," but
instead I'll add some other general thoughts about the topic.
I once said to a certain someone that there were two main positions in favor
of ad hominem attacks in philosophy: Socrates/Rousseau and Nietzsche.
Socrates and Rousseau both thought that the Truth was out there and that we
had a duty to speak the Truth no matter whose feelings it hurt. Socrates is
famous for making fun of his philosophical opponents, twisting them up in
words, and Rousseau for being the great, paranoid Parisian pariah who never
quite fit in to salon life because he didn't think much of decorum or the
kind of dry wit Oscar Wilde prided himself on. Nietzsche thought that a
philosophical position was a reflection of a person. Before Wittgenstein
suggested that philosophy was a therapeutic enterprise and about the same
time as Pierce suggested that thought was a habit of action, Nietzsche ran
the two suggestions together. He thought it was okay to attack a person in
order to get to their philosophy because the two were basically
interchangeable.
I added that these guys were geniuses, though, so we could excuse them of
some indecency.
That's not quite right, though. It doesn't quite cut to the philosophical
thick of it, for I think they're might be something interesting
philosophically about it. The first thing to realize is that Pirsig
(philosophically) sides with Nietzsche. When Pirsig suggests that we _are_
static patterns, rather than having static patterns, he's suggesting that
attacks on philosophical positions are attacks on the person. As I put it
in the "Open Letter," "When the smoke gets thick, it means that the
propositions and theses being kicked around aren’t simply hypotheses with
which we are going to gradually eliminate until there is a winner. That is
exactly what’s going to happen (given the ideal of inquiry), but it is an
excruciatingly arduous and torturous affair when these theses are deeply
held and deeply believed. Saying that the ideas we kick around are simply
'truth candidates' doesn’t quite grasp the event that is taking place.
These ideas _are us_.... The event of philosophy is the event of reshaping
ourselves, not in some cosmetic sense, but in the sense that after we are
done we are not who we were when we started."
I've written several times about this over the years because various people
over time have written that people who react violently to criticism are
_over_reacting, usually because their egos are getting in the way. Most of
the times the ones who say this are the ones who use the most vitriolic
language to make their point. Something's not right. So, I've written many
alternative accounts of why things get heated. The thing is, egos are the
whole thing. "Ego" is latin for "self." In Pirsig's vision of things, how
could our egos not "get in the way" when our egos are the whole thing, the
only _thing_, given the description of the self as a set of static patterns,
including philosophical patterns? What they mean, of course, is inflated
self-importance. Their claim is, "Hey, it doesn't matter how I say things.
If you react poorly, it exposes you as an ego-maniacal lightweight." A very
effective rhetorical ploy.
One reply to this line of argument is that in Pirsig's vision ego is the
whole _thing_, but the object of the game is the Buddhist one of dissolving
your "self." "There is no spoon" as the kid told Neo in The Matrix. So,
goes this counter, when Pirsig climbs the mountain and describes one kind of
climber as an "ego-climber," he isn't just talking about egotists, he's
talking more generally about people who climb for their "self," people who
haven't dissolved their "self" as the Buddhists say is a prerequisite for
enlightenment. In this vision of Pirsig's philosophy, our egos do get in
the way, but they can be gotten rid of by dissolving them. I think this
vision involves the kind of seperation of ideas from people that I'm
suggesting is counter to Pirsig. The practical up-shot of this Buddhist
dissolution is that, once we see that "there is no self," we can just sit
around and talk about which ideas are the best ones. No one takes offense
because there is no "one."
I don't think this quite works and I think it does a poor job of accounting
for real life. Much like when Pirsig got up and left when the Benares
Professor explained that the nuking of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was an
illusion, if Pirsig would respond like that, I'd get up and leave the table.
Besides the poor account of real life, the philosophical problem with the
above account is that, also in Pirsig's vision, intellectual patterns (or
"ideas") don't hang around by themselves. They sit on top of social on top
of biological on top of inorganic patterns. In other words, we _can't_
seperate the patterns from the person--the pratical up-shot is impossible.
The return counter is that the dissolution of the self is the Dynamic
viewpoint. We don't actually "dissolve" ourselves, they're just two
viewpoints, Dynamic and static. From a Dynamic viewpoint there is no self,
so debating ideas is no rub against ourselves. It is only from a static
viewpoint that one's ego might get in the way. My counter-reply is that
from the Dynamic viewpoint, there is no self, and if there is no self, there
are no ideas to have an opinion about because there is no self--and from
Pirsig's standpoint, if there is no self, there are no intellectual patterns
because the self _is_ intellectual patterns. The only way to judge is from
the static standpoint (this is part of my re-visioning of Pirsig's
philosophy, as in my post on "Harmony, Static Patterns, and DQ" from July
4). (There's also a more technical reply about how we can't judge without
having judgments already in place, or ideas unless they are against a
background of ideas, etc. In this continued reply, somebody who pushes the
"no self" self should be seen as a modern philosopher, which is bad.)
The poor account of real life objection is actually the more interesting
one, though. It's one that Pirsig gives us, actually. In the very
beginning of ZMM, Pirsig talks about "care." We need to care about the
things in our lives. That is excellence. On the face of it, "care" isn't a
very Buddhist thing. Care is a flipside of desire, and we are supposed to
get rid of that. Isn't that always what they're telling us in the movies,
that the hardest thing for someone turning into a Buddhist is getting rid of
their attachments--particularly to other people? Pirsig is obviously
involved in his own re-visioning of Eastern philosophy, but I don't think he
gets it quite right. He gives us all the pieces, but I don't think he quite
fits them all together. So, we are supposed to care about our ideas, which
is really another way of saying, care about yourself. If you can just talk
nonchalantly about an idea (which seems to be the practical up-shot of the
impossible Dynamic viewpoint), then obviously you don't care about it much.
It isn't central to who you think you are. But the object of philosophy is
dig around at who you conceive of yourself _centrally_. In the end, because
we _are_ our ideas, the choice we do get to make (since we can't choose the
Dynamic viewpoint, we can't choose to _not_ be us) is about how we present
ourselves, what rhetorical tact we take. There are three general archetypes
(and three contemporary manifestations) I'd highlight: Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle.
A Socrates claims that he has no knowledge. He confronts and confounds his
discussion partners without ever taking a position himself, dancing away
lightly when pushed. His air of superiority comes from the fact that the
only thing he knows is that he does not know--and he can show that you don't
either. The contemporary manifestation is the Buddha (particularly a fat,
pudgy, laughing Buddha). The Buddha does know something: that the Knowledge
everyone is after isn't possible. When pushed on that, the Buddha dances
away because all of this is an illusion. So, while we can talk about
consequences and ideas, we shouldn't get all that worked up about it because
it is all a mirage.
A Plato is an earnest seeker of Truth. Knowledge _has_ to be possible and
the Plato will find it--and do whatever it takes. Truth is the only goal
and if people get hurt, it's their own fault for getting in the way. The
Plato will often use a Socratic mask to batter his enemies, make them look
like fools, before elaborating on the Truth that he has found. The
contemporary manifestation is the Nietzsche. The flip side of the Plato,
the Nietzsche doesn't think there is any Truth or Knowledge at the end of
any Yellow Brick Road--there are only People. Truth is a power play, and
ridiculing your enemies is the same as ridiculing their ideas.
An Aristotle is an earnest seeker of Truth, but he is fair-minded and
contemplative. Not everyone else is wrong, sometimes they are right, and
the rightness of everyone's ideas must be integrated together before moving
on. The Aristotle is a sifter, a diplomat who sees the best in everyone,
who knows that there are different tools for different occasions. Sometimes
people need to get pushed, but sometimes not. If we are all seeking Truth,
then we're all on the same team, so let's work together, pool our resources
and brain power, and form a research team to find the Truth. The
contemporary manifestation is the Pirsig. The flip side of the Aristotle,
much like the Nietzsche to the Plato, the Pirsig doesn't think there is any
Truth or Knowledge--there are only People. But truth isn't a power play.
We are all in some sense on the same side, not in the sense that we need to
form research teams to hunt the Truth, but in the sense that we are all
fellow-travelers, wandering our way through life. The Pirsig's goal is to
live an excellent life. He cares about other people and wants to help them
live excellently, too.
These are all rhetorical tacts and they are bound up in some way with our
philosophical positions. The best one, personally, is the Pirsig. To be a
Pirsig, you are polite, yet playful, and rarely are you vitriolic. We are
all in the same boat trying to make the best of our lives. What's the point
of aggressively attacking fellow-travelers?
Matt
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