From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat May 24 2003 - 21:40:10 BST
Matt and all:
Hmmm. You have some interesting and self-contradictory views on politics and
philosophy....
Matt:
He goes to great lengths in his Spinoza lectures and in other places to
discourage people like Derrida, Norris, and Culler from thinking that
philosophy is a good political tool.
dmb says:
Postmodernism is NOT to be used in politics. Rorty goes to great lengths to
pint this out. I see.
Matt:
I think it makes the mistake of making philosophy a political weapon.
Philosophy may be a good handmaiden to politics, but it is a poor master.
dmb says:
Philosophy is NOT to be used as a political weapon. The MOQ's mistake. I
see.
Matt:
I always thought of the kinds of post-modernism I like as reinstituting
values, in the form of praxis and politics. Politics are all about values.
dmb says:
Postmodernism is ALL ABOUT values and politics!? Huh? What happened? I
thought that's where the MOQ went wrong. How did you change your mind so
quickly and completely? Did you undergo a transcendental change during the
composition of that post? Are you taking BOTH sides in order to avoid
criticism? Or are you just stoned on cold medicine? :-)
But seriously, you are aware of postmodernism's role in the current
political debates and culture wars, no? (Sorry to disappoint you, but I was
talking about social trends, current events and recent history, not Rorty in
particular.) My point, which you seem to have missed, was only that the
attack on race and gender based hierarchies is an extension of the attack on
social values after WWI that Pirsig describes in such detail. This is only a
problem to the extent that these social structures are regarded as arbitrary
and meaningless. Again, as Pirsig explains in detail, there are good reasons
why we should examine these structures with the intellect and see what they
were trying to do. Only SOME traditions and social structure will prove to
be arbitrary and meaningless. We dispose of the rest at our own peril. I
mean, Pirsig talks about the problems we get from throwing the baby out with
the bathwater, which is what postmodernism does to the extent that it throws
out ALL hierarchies. This is what's going on whether you or Rorty like it or
not, you know. In some pomo circles all hierarchies are seen as inherently
oppressive.
Watching babies go down the drain,
DMB
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