From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Mon Dec 29 2003 - 17:13:48 GMT
Ant,
> Despite this, maybe we'll see some original philosophy from Matt in the
new year?
I find this request to be rather over the top. Of course Matt is "rehashing"
Rorty, since what he is doing is comparing Pirsig's X to Rorty's Y and
finding Rorty's Y to be preferable, much as in the past I have "rehashed"
Owen Barfield since I found his treatment of the intellect to be much better
than Pirsig's.
>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."
Should I ask you to stop rehashing Foucault and Habermas (or Best &
Kellner)?
To something more substantive, you say:
>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.
I think you guess wrongly. More likely is that he got to where Pirsig starts
hypostasizing Quality, and decided that Pirsig was being metaphysical, and
gave up on him.
For what it's worth, I think Pirsig and Rorty both get "it" wrong: Rorty for
being too secular to appreciate the value of Buddhist irony, and Pirsig for
not being ironical enough (e.g, his DQ = nirvana overlooks the Madhyamika
point that nirvana = samsara).
- Scott
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