From: David Harding (davidharding@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Sun Nov 02 2003 - 10:28:47 GMT
Hi Platt,
Platt's original comment:
From just the brief description above, two ideas jump out -- "substance
of style" and "aesthetic imperative" -- immediately connecting in my
mind to "quality as real as rocks" and "the aesthetic nature of the
conceptually unknown."
David H said:
I don't think that quality is 'style' or even 'substance of style'. Pirsig
talks at lengths in ZMM about classical ugliness with 'romantic aesthetic
style' as that which is patched on to give something the Appearance of
quality.
David H also said:
I'm not sure of the precise history of the word Style so I looked it up in the
dictionary and formed an ad hoc one to get a better idea..
Style n
1. An instrument used by the ancients in writing on tablets covered with wax,
having one of its ends sharp, and the other blunt, and somewhat expanded, for
the purpose of making erasures by smoothing the wax.
2. Mode of expressing thought in language, whether oral or written;
especially, such use of language in the expression of thought as exhibits the
spirit and faculty of an artist; choice or arrangement of words in discourse;
rhetorical expression.
3. a way of expressing something (in language or art or music etc.) that is
characteristic of a particular person or group of people or period; "all the
reporters were expected to adopt the style of the newspaper"
Remember Rhetoric in ZMM? Style is an offshoot term, its manifestation from
an ancient writing instrument into another term for rhetorical expression
and nowadays you can do just about anything in a particular 'style' . This
style, as I have said, is patched on because since Plato people have sought
to define the good and where possible subordinate it intellectually which is
thus increasingly strangling quality and producing 'forms' of classical
ugliness. And so as people have become progressively alienated from 'the
source of all things' the result has been a desperate attempt to reclaim this
with 'style' or as Pirsig puts it in Chap 25..
"The result is rather typical of modern technology, dullness of appearance so
depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of 'style' to make it
acceptable."
Platt replies:
I think Pirsig rejected his negative opinion of style..
"From that original perception of the Indians as the originators of the
American style of speech had come an expansion. The Indians were the
originators of the American style of life."
David H responds:
Ahh! Yes, Style like Rhetoric outside of SOM has much better meaning. From a
non SOM based Quality or American Indian perspective style is not an after
thought to hide blind classical ugliness, it's just the way you do
something..
However, I think that although the American style of life originated from the
Indians it is still European SOM based, which brings with it the coined
'negative' aspect of style and so as Pirsig says in Lila in Chapter 3
"Within each American these conflicting sets of values still clash".
Which brings us back to your comment that "substance of style" was a direct
connotation to Quality. To me it appears that while Virginia Postrel was
using this rhetorical display to make style appear as real as rocks, what it
has in fact done is given an excellent example of how she's used SOM based
Aristotelian language to do so, aka "substance of form" - where the style is
thrown atop the ugly form to make it look pretty. That is, she couldn't
possibly be talking outside of SOM.
Platt also said:
I think it's clear that Pirsig rejected his Classic/Romantic division as
described in ZMM.
David H replies:
Right, he rejected it as the best way to divide quality, but I think it was
the way in which he discovered the quality concept within Western SOM culture
and all of it's isolation problems to begin with.
Regards,
David H
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Nov 02 2003 - 10:26:21 GMT