From: ant.mcwatt@ntlworld.com
Date: Mon Dec 29 2003 - 11:22:03 GMT
Re: MD Re: Faith, Pirsig on war & Rorty
From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 16 2003 - 18:29:15 GMT
Matt, stated on December 16th 2003:
First, I'm not sure what you think the difference is between Rorty's avoidance and Pirsig's reconciliation. I find them to be almost indistinguishable besides residual scientism in Pirsig.
Ant:
Firstly, you might like to know that there is an interesting interview with Rorty in the Oct/Nov 2003 “pragmatism” issue of “Philosophy Now”. (I refer to it, here and there, in the following.)
OK, to deal with the above point: I read Rorty as avoiding the reconciliation of art and science as seen in his division of the self into private/artist/ironist, on the one hand, and public/rational/liberal, on the other. This is quite clearly stated in Rorty’s CON. Meanwhile, Pirsig uses a value framework to combine the arts and sciences so seemingly rational, scientific procedures such as motorcycle maintenance are best perceived as also being artistic endeavours. As such, it is difficult to understand how
you find the two philosophers “to be almost indistinguishable”. The two philosophers may start from C.P. Snow’s 1958 dichotomy but, in their different philosophical strategies, they arrive at diametrically opposed points.
Matt:
Second, Rorty thinks that _nothing_ is worth a damn if it doesn't improve real life…
Ant:
Well, if he does, he certainly doesn’t emphasis this.
Matt continues:
However, there are different ways of using philosophy to improve real life…
One way is by thinking of philosophy as poetry, like those in the post-Nietzschean tradition.
Ant: I think the term “post-Nietzschean tradition” is vague here as Pirsig could be placed in such a tradition but I am assuming you mean Rorty’s pet philosophers such as Heidegger and Wittgenstein.
Anyway, to return to your (Rorty’s?) point that thinking of philosophy as poetry will improve real life.
Couldn’t this be a retrograde step by conflating disciplines which are best kept largely distinct? For instance,
“The poet is the first to recognize the need to use words to express the passion with which an experience of the logos fills a person. The philosopher tries to understand the logos in such a way as to separate truth from fiction. And the scientist forgets the logos altogether in search of concrete facts that can be manipulated. This ‘forgetting’ is the source of the modern problem of meaninglessness or ‘alienation’.”
See “Philosophy as Metaphysical Demythologizing” by Stephen Palmquist at: http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/tp4/top02.html
It seems to me that though the poet is driven by a passion to express artistic truth (in words), this type of truth is different from the rationalist type of truth that is the usual concern for philosophy.
However, though there is some value in perceiving philosophy as art, Matt isn’t consistent in this belief as he further notes:
“Another way is by thinking of philosophy as politics, like those in the post-Marxist tradition (in the wide sense in which Dewey, Foucault, and Habermas all fall into). The goal here is to clear away conceptual problems, dig out cruelty in our social institutions, i.e. public type things.”
Ant:
This is just a re-hashing of Rorty’s philosophy. Leaving this point aside, I think the main problem with the above is that the division between public issues and private issues is not always clear cut. In fact, the more I think of this division, the more problematic I think it is.
For instance, let’s examine the first sentence of Matt’s after the above paragraph:
“The point I was making with my original comments was that this discussion group is something we do on the weekends, something we do for fun, i.e. its part of our private lives.”
OK this is true to a certain extent. But “this discussion group is something we do” also for edifying purposes and debating skills i.e. it’s also part of our public lives.
The same principle applies to art and the sciences as they are both private and public endeavours. Moreover, I can’t see how the private ironist side of a person won’t affect their public liberal side and vice versa. In fact, Rorty’s assertion that there should be such a dichotomy sounds just like the type of dualism which Dewey would frown on. As Pfeiffer (from “Philosophy Now”) notes:
“Dewey identified certain philosophical distinctions, called dualisms, as obstacles to improved understanding. In the end, both human experience and nature, for Dewey, lack sharp breaks, distinctions or dichotomies. Destructive dualisms include supposed sharp ontological and epistemological divisions between mind and body, between knowledge and inquiry, between logic and reality, and between government and society.”
http://www.philosophynow.org/issue43/43pfeiffer.htm
Matt:
Third, I never said philosophy shouldn't be concerned with real life issues. Rortyans simply think that, for the most part, real life issues can be split into public issues and private issues.
Anthony:
The first problem with the above paragraph is the term “Rortyan” which, in the above context, is an absurdity. This is because anyone who seriously believes Rorty’s call for artistic self-creation won’t simply regurgitate Rortyan philosophy but invent an original philosophy (as per Nietzsche or Pirsig). As Rorty notes:
“The generic task of the ironist is… to sum up his life in his own terms…. That the last of his final vocabularies, at least, really was wholly his.” (CON, p.97)
I’d rather visit Rorty’s website or read his books rather than look at Matt’s second hand rehash. It seems that Matt has gone from being a priest of one philosopher (i.e. Pirsig) to just being a priest of another (i.e. Rorty) thus ignoring the emphasis both these philosophers have on creative originality.
Secondly (read this sentence carefully), I never said that Matt said that “philosophy shouldn't be concerned with real life issues”. I was referring to the implications of Rorty’s philosophy which I read as primarily being produced to make liberal-minded academics feel better about them selves.
For instance, despite strongly promoting ironic philosophy (i.e. philosophy that an individual creates for themselves i.e. a true philosopher in Pirsigian terms), Rorty thinks that “a society whose culture socialised its youth in such a way as to make them continually dubious about their own process of socialization” is a bad thing; that in “the ideal liberal society (only) the intellectuals would still be ironists.” (CON, page 87) This section strikes me of elitism.
One of the aspects that first attracted me to Pirsig’s ZMM was its attempt to appeal to the every person. It gave the everyday motor mechanic or parent or teacher, some credit in being an intellectual and an ironist (to use Rorty’s terminology). I think the world would be a much better place if there were more “Guardian” reading train guards and TV aerial men who read Levi-Strauss (as I met recently). It seems that Rorty’s philosophy might make a certain kind of liberal feel happier about their life but it
does nothing to maintain a high quality intellectual culture for the general public or the related problems of modern human beings (e.g. poverty, AIDS, pollution, over-population, starvation etc.) as marked out by Andy Bahn on MOQ Discuss during November 2003.
This relates to Rorty’s assertion in CON (p. 94) that journalism will do much more for freedom and equality than ironist philosophy. This is surely wrong. To realise this, you only have to examine the xenophobia and sexism generated in the gutter press of the UK (i.e. The Sun, Sport, Express, Daily Mail etc) or the scare-mongering TV news that is largely to blame for the relatively high number of gun deaths in the United States (as noted in Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine”). As such, I really think
it’s a dangerous idea to rely on the present _mass_ media of the West to defend freedom and equality. Mandatory classes in philosophy (ironist and otherwise) and sociology for school children would be more effective.
Moreover, there are problems with Rorty’s definition of a liberal as avoiding being cruel as the worst thing that one can do. He just asserts this in CON as a given truth without argument. Sorry, that’s just not acceptable. For instance, I actually think it’s a good thing if politicians and religious fundamentalists suffer at the hands of comedians like Bill Hicks and Rory Bremner. Not only does it make me feel better, such cruelty might actually assist in changing public consciousness for the better.
Furthermore, in CON (p.52), Rorty states that “A liberal society is one which is content to call ‘true’ whatever the upshot of such (free and open) encounters turns out to be” is also problematic. Firstly, the ideal of free and open encounters is never found in real life. Rorty’s definition gives no challenge to the status quo and sounds like relativistic pluralism. As Best & Kellner (1991, p.288-89) note:
“In the world of Lyotard and Rorty, there is no such thing as class or systematically enforced exclusion and oppression. In opposition to this pluralism, Foucault… reminds us that asymmetrical power relations constitute knowledge and discourse, and that some discursive subjects and positions are more authoritative than others. Similarly, Habermas argues that the conditions of conversation can be distorted from the start, and hence not everyone participates on equal terms. Thus, both liberal pluralist and
postmodern theory show an inability to grasp systematic relations and causal nexuses, and mystify various forms of social inequality.”
Even as an ideal, Rorty’s definition lacks reference to the quality of individual opinions; for instance, the doctor’s opinion on the car engine is seemingly as valid as the engineer’s whose opinion on brain surgery is seemingly equal as the neuro-surgeon’s. Rorty’s definition is problematic as the “vox populi” opinion becomes the “vox Dei” opinion.
Finally, in Chapter Eight of CON, Rorty focuses probably on one of the most depressing sections on politics ever written; namely the last half of Orwell’s 1984 where the central character of the novel, Winston Smith, is broken by the state torturer, O’Brien.
Believe me, it was torture to plough through this chapter which I only managed to get through by imagining myself as O’Brien and Rorty and/or Matt as Winston. If I sound less than enthusiastic with Matt’s promotion of Rorty, this chapter goes a long way in explaining my feelings. My worst fear is now having my eyelids clamped open and being made to continually read nothing else but Matt’s rehashes of Rorty. :-)
One of Rorty’s conclusions is that O’Brien is one of the last liberal ironists in the world of 1984. I find this hard to believe as the last two digits of the 1984 title were turned round by Orwell because he was actually writing a critique of his own era (i.e. 1948) rather than some warning of an ironist future as Rorty tries to argue. From our perspective in 2003/04, it is apparent that 1984 was written at the beginning of the cold war era (of 1946 to 1990) while CON was written towards the end. It is also
apparent that the government propaganda that Orwell was criticising in the late 1940s is still very much with us as seen in the recent conflicts over oil in Iraq (and Afghanistan) which were misleadingly portrayed as disputes over humanitarian and/or security issues by the UK and US governments.
It seems that the moment you leave a Quality based way of thinking (where something is decided as good and bad in the here and now), static moral imperatives such as Kant’s categorical imperative or Rorty’s definition of liberalism become problematic as they can’t take accommodate all the possibilities that might appear in a Dynamic reality.
Unfortunately, I think that despite attending the same philosophy department as Pirsig (and even having, at least, two of the same lecturers: Carnap and Richard McKeon), Rorty hasn’t disassociated himself far enough from traditional philosophy whether it’s from the Anglo-American tradition or the other main foundation of his work, post-modernism. This is clearly seen in his interview with “Philosophy Now” where he admits to being sympathetic to both traditions and his linguistic flavoured comment in footnote 15
in CON, p.153:
“I would argue that if you can’t use language, you can’t be conscious of inner images.”
To put it in his words, Rorty is still too much of a metaphysician and not enough of an ironist. I guess he may have dropped LILA after starting to read it as he realised that his philosophy is less viable as a genuine final vocabulary than the MOQ. Pirsig’s use of cosmological evolution and the Mahayana idea of “nothingness” (in the MOQ) is an original philosophical option that Rorty overlooked in reconciling the art-science dichotomy of C.P. Snow.
Unfortunately, both the analytic and the post-modern strands used by of Rorty leave this dichotomy untouched. Moreover, as both traditions are elitist and obscure they are unable to appeal to people in general and is why I think they are largely useless for improving the general quality of life. Rorty seems a sincere liberal and may nominally be a pragmatist but his work goes against their spirit. But, hey, maybe this is what we should expect from a 1950s graduate from the University of Chicago. At least,
Rorty is trying to break the mould though possibly a year or two in India (as experienced by his later pragmatist colleague) would have prevented his neo-pragmatism from being so derivative and banal.
Despite this, maybe we’ll see some original philosophy from Matt in the new year?
Best wishes,
Anthony.
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