From: ant.mcwatt@ntlworld.com
Date: Mon Dec 15 2003 - 04:52:10 GMT
Firstly, I thought Khoo Hock Aun’s two “Sit on my faith” posts from December 10th and 11th 2003 concerning Buddhism and the possible life of Jesus in India were particularly interesting. The latter post certainly gives some food for thought.
Secondly, I have pasted below a letter I received from Robert Pirsig in October 2002 which will hopefully lead to less simplistic “Yes, I’m wrong /No, you’re right” type of posts and more constructive philosophical discussion in the MOQ Discuss debate concerning the Iraqi conflict.
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Pirsig to McWatt October 2nd 2002:
The Philosophy Now articles on war seem interesting but, as usual,
philosophically inconclusive, except to assure us that war is bad, which we
already knew…
The MOQ provides some philosophic thoughts on the subject, which are:
1. All wars are a struggle between good and evil. Nobody would get into
them if they didn¹t think they were better than not going to war.
2. All wars occur because of differing concepts of what is good. Getting
more land is better than not getting more land. Defending one¹s honor is
better than not defending one¹s honor. Building up one¹s own ego is good
(at a low evolutionary level.) Destroying an inferior culture is better
than allowing that inferior culture to become a threat.
3. Some concepts of good are absolutely superior to other concepts of good,
(with all the caveats brought up by the Lila Squad.) These can be sorted
out on the basis of evolutionary superiority and provide a framework for
analyzing the causes and determining the solutions of individual wars.
4. The reasons various cultures give for hating other cultures provide
valuable keys for analyzing the hating cultures themselves under the
principle, “One condemns most in others that which he fears most in
himself.” The Muslims condemn us for degeneracy but if one analyses the
Islamic culture in terms their fear of their own degeneracy, one gets a
different perspective on their attacks…
5. A solution to wars can be promoted by discovering and emphasizing areas
of commonly agreed upon good between the warring parties. Food and money
are universally agreed upon as good and seem to be working well to prevent
future Afghan wars. The U.S. did well in Japan after WW 2 by making a
puppet out of Emperor Hirohito even though he was a primary culprit. Greek
and Hindu pantheism are considered to be efforts to find common deities
among different cultures and stave off war. But there are more subtle
things. It could be argued that the hippies of the Sixties helped prevent a
race war in America by adopting many black values toward music and language
and biological freedom. If you look into the history of British colonialism
in India you find they were very skilled at preventing the local wars that
had ridden the subcontinent before they came, something they have never, to
my knowledge, been given credit for.
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Thirdly, Matt, our resident Rorty philosophologist (I state the latter as a genuine liberal ironist would formulate their own “final vocabulary” i.e. philosophy!), stated recently:
> We generally have no idea what any of us do in our non-forum time because it is
> rarely discussed. We are here to discuss philosophy, not talk about what
> political rallies we've recently organized.
I’m sure that is a sentiment that Rorty would be happy to endorse with his avoidance of C.P. Snow’s art-science dichotomy. However, remember that this is a forum about Pirsig’s pragmatism. Not only does Pirsig show that C.P. Snow’s dichotomy can be reconciled (because both art and science employ values), he clearly states that philosophy is not worth a damn if it doesn't improve real life.
I suppose it could be argued that politics shouldn’t be concerned with real life issues (such as health, education, welfare and war) but it’s not a view that “holds much water” with us pragmatists. With all due respect, this is just one reason why we doubt that the SOM flavoured public/private split as Rorty formulated it in “Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity” (CON) will ever catch on. Moreover, by definition being an elitist manifesto targeted towards a few liberal intellectuals, Rorty’s CON was certainly not written (as ZMM was, for example) to “catch on” in a general way.
Best wishes,
Anthony.
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