From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Mon Jul 21 2003 - 18:58:12 BST
DMB, Rick,
DMB said:
The "aesthetic pleasure", says our unknown author, is "a major clue to the quality of the revelation". And I'm glad the writer used the word "revelation" because I think what we're talking about here is, for lack of a better word, spirituality. See, its not just that we are pleasantly surprized by new twists on old formulas, it is that we intuitively perceive the harmony between the rendered static form and the cosmic order of things. Its true that all static forms are a product of this same cosmic order, but as they grow stale and then obsolete that original meaning is lost. The creative person's job, then, is to shatter the old forms and render the the same "truth" in new forms, ones that refresh the quality of the revelation. (That's why Pirsig refers to the contrarians as agents of moral regeneration.) Not that every creative work is supposed to be some great cosmological depiction, but only that it finds some small corner to illuminate or otherwise corresponds to it. Re
ligious people often talk about "God's will" and if one looks past all the nonsense that goes along with that, I think we can see that they are talking about this same harmony or correspondence to the cosmic order. This is usually in reference to personal behavior rather than artistic or intellectual creations, but still...
Rick replied:
I know what you're saying here David, but I don't think creativity is always about rendering the "same truth" in new forms. While, no doubt, that is sometimes the case, I think a belief in DQ implies a belief that the truth can get better over time; and that therefore, one of the functions of the creative must be to refresh the old forms by co-opting them to render newer and higher quality revelations.
Matt:
I agree that creativity isn't rendering the "same truth" in new forms. When DMB starts talking about corresponding to the "cosmic order of things," I see that as a remenant of Platonism, of the appearance/reality distinction. I have no truck with corresponding to anything already pre-given. I most certainly do not see us as having an intuitive perception of DQ. As I've said before (and I'll unpack more for Johnny), I see DQ as a compliment we pay to something only after the fact. We may sense a break with tradition as being good, but that doesn't by itself make it good. Hitler thought he perceived Aryan supremacy as something good. I hope we all agree that it was not, despite the fact that he and many others thought so.
I see DQ as something that breaks with the past in some way, that doesn't repackage the same truth in new forms, but, in a Wittgensteinian manner, creates new forms of life where new and different kinds of things are truth-candidates. The creation of the liberal in Enlightenment Europe, where the individual was given political and social importance, was the creation of a new type of person, a new form of life, a complete break with the older, Greek-given polis-centered form of political life. I don't see this as corresponding to some cosmic order that always had held that the individual should have a private life that is separate from state intervention, but as the shunting away of an older, now obsolete way of looking at things. It was the creation of new truths.
DMB also said:
And may I say how refreshing it is to see you discussing the MOQ. You didn't even mention Rorty. Yahooo!
Matt:
And hey, you didn't even mention Wilber or Campbell. Good for you!
No, thank you,
Matt
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