From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sun Mar 23 2003 - 19:40:44 GMT
Sam, (and anyone who wants to know what I've been doing for the last week),
Sorry I've been away. Actually, that's a complete and utter lie. After
all, I've been in Key West and it is gorgeous there. Coming from Wisconsin
(which is cold) and then going to the tropics (which is warm and hot and
wonderful) is something that makes you forget about all the philosophy you
left hanging. I suggest it to everyone.
But now that I'm back, I've a bit of slogging to do. We'll see how I do.
First up, Sam!
Sam said:
I'm going to think about the question whether Pirsig is 'post-post-modern'.
I suspect that he isn't for two reasons. One is his conception of the
intellect, which seems profoundly Platonist. The second is that - although
this has been debated - as I read him he makes truth one species of value,
and that we therefore judge 'reason' and 'truth' by how much value or
quality they have. So he seems, when he is in that mode of expression, to be
simply post-modernist. Or just sensible, however you want to describe it. Of
course, at other times he just seems modernist, but that's another argument.
Matt:
Since you asked me for an expansion (one I will give in a moment), I was
hoping you could briefly expand on 'intellect as Platonist'. I have strong
feeling I would agree, I just want to know a bit more clearly what it
is. Your second reason seems right on to me. I never thought of it that
way, but that's a perfect way of spinning Pirsig to look more
post-modern. Truth is a function of your contingent modes of
valuing. That's good. I think, if you don't mind, I might co-opt that.
Sam said:
To save me digging through the archives, any chance you could provide a
quick (one paragraph) summary of why you think "the post-modern turn is
getting rid of the appearance/reality distinction and, as I see it, that
distinction is absolutely paramount to the mysticism Pirsig wants to
incorporate".
Matt:
I hope you didn't take my week long silence as reason to go digging. I
doubt you would've found it. It came out of a discussion with Scott R, and
I have no idea where it is. I don't think I really developed the thought
much there, anyway.
I assume what you want me to summarize is the second half of that
statement. The first half is just a Rortyan spin on what it means to be
post-modern. The mysticism I'm thinking of is the kind that uses notions
of "maya". They say that the world around us is an illusion (a "mere"
appearance) and that reality is something else (depends on what kind of
mysticism you are talking about). This is the most clear cut version of an
appearance/reality distinction. This is the kind that Pirsig is talking
about when he describes the two most forceful attacks the MoQ would
receive: from logical positivism and mysticism. "Mystics will tell you
that once you've opened the door to metaphysics you can say good-bye to any
genuine understanding of reality. Thought is not a path to reality. It
sets obstacles in that path because when you try to use thought to approach
something that is prior to thought your thinking does not carry you toward
that something. It carries you _away_ from it." (Lila, Ch. 5) As
pragmatists would have it, the mistake of mysticism is to think that
reality is an object that one needs to move towards. This is the same
mistake we charge modernists with when they hypostatize Truth and Goodness
and make them objects of inquiry, something we need to move towards. In a
way, Pirsig provides a good answer to the mystics when he says that we are
always and everywhere in touch with Quality (i.e. reality). We don't need
to move towards it because it isn't an object "out there," it is
ubiquitously everything. It is hard not to be in touch with something that
is everything. This is why I find Pirsig's "mysticism," his refusal to
define Quality, so in link with Rorty. Rorty doesn't think we should
search after an underlying reality, either; we are always and everywhere in
touch with it. So I struggle with Pirsig's mysticism because it wants to
incorporate an appearance/reality distinction while repudiating it by
saying we are always in touch with Reality. Or, at least, it is very easy
to read Pirsig as incorporating an appearance/reality distinction and
people do on a regular basis.
Matt
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