From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 10 2003 - 00:23:49 GMT
DMB,
As I tell all people who write me directly, "Thanks for reading and replying."
I only have two comments.
One, you suggested I contradict Pirsig by saying, "Pirsig follows Rorty in
fingering Plato for causing many of the apparent problems of philosophy.
However, as soon as he finishes condemning Plato for creating SOM, he
suggests that what's really real is Quality." You quote Pirsig saying
Aristotle is the beginning of SOM. Well, I guess Pirsig contradicts
himself then, because, as most people will remember, Pirsig talks about
Plato alot in ZMM as the source of SOM, not Aristotle. I even have a
helpful footnote giving a reference point to where I'm thinking of in the text
Second, and more importantly, you suggest that to read two sentences you
pulled out of my essay, you have to "know quite alot about Kant,
Copernicus, Rorty, Descartes, Nietzche, Plato and de Man." Actually, you
don't. You only need to know one of the relations (Pirsig to SOM,
Copernicus to Ptolemaic astronomy, Kant to Cartesian epistemology,
Nietzsche to Platonism, de Man to "the metaphysics of presence") to
understand the meanings of the sentences. From there the meaning of the
other relations is implied. And since the essay is on Pirsig, I figure the
people reading the essay would know that relation, and so would at the
least have that key to the meanings of the sentences.
This comment from DMB is in a larger context of him not understanding what
I write. But the way to understanding me is suggested by myself when I say
that I didn't understand Rorty when I first started reading him: read more.
Either more of the stuff I write or the stuff on which I talk about.
That's how anybody begins to understand anything. They find more and more
connections between things. Now, I kept reading Rorty because I felt there
was a pot of gold at the end of his rainbow. This is probably not the case
with DMB's feeling about me. So what do I suggest? Don't read my
writings. It really is that simple. This discussion group is about
discoursing on topics that the writers want to discourse on. You enter
into dialogues you want to. There isn't a mandatory rule that you have to
discuss things with everybody. Just ignore me. Its no skin off my teeth.
This is a voluntary discussion group where we talk about what we want.
Matt
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