From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sun Jan 04 2004 - 21:59:08 GMT
Ian,
Ian said:
I've been ploughing through Rorty in the last couple of months and still find Pirsig to be a pragmatist in Rorty terms, but am constantly baffled that Rorty steers clear not only of any absolute values, but even from any useful framework of values like the MoQ.
Matt:
If you've followed and agreed with most of Rorty's train of thought, I'm not sure why the bafflement at no "absolute values," but the reason why Rorty refrains from constructing frameworks is that Rorty agrees with Stanely Fish that frameworks like the MoQ are just begging for reification, for "promotion" to transcendental, ahistorical status. Rorty says "that attempts to erect 'rules' or 'criteria' turn into attempts to hypostatize and eternalize some past or present practice, thereby making it more difficult for that practice to be reformed or gradually replaced with a different practice." ("Cosmopolitianism Without Emancipation" in ORT, 217) Pragmatists agree with Fish's use of "rules of thumb" over "principles".
Ian said:
Has Rorty ever published comments on Pirsig or the MoQ ?
Matt:
No, aside from a letter to Dave Thomas which you can find in the archives on Friday, May 17 2002 under "Re: MD pragmatism" (it's "From" Dave's handle "3dwavedave"). His comments are fairly short and I disagree completely with Dave's (and subsequently other's) assessment of them. I am a strong adherement of "nobody is required to read anybody else, though anybody can be saddened by somebody else's reading list." Not the shortest slogan I've ever written, but the one I find the most useful given the amount of letters I've received criticizing me by saying "You shouldn't have written your essay about X, it should've been about Y." Most of the time that counts as one of the weakest criticisms you could ever try and just begs for the response, "Well, ya' know what? I didn't write it about Y, I wrote it about X, so get over it."
Am I saddened by Rorty's short shrift of Pirsig? Sure, no doubt. Do I understand why Rorty didn't really get into ZMM and didn't make it through Lila? Yeah, I do, but it has nothing to do with some world-wide intellectual culture problem as Dave and most Pirsigian's here would have it (and are in general encouraged to think by Pirsig himself). What books grab us will always be highly idiosyncratic, but there's no doubt we can trace a line of reasoning. In Rorty's case, I imagine it had a lot to do with why I tend to think Sophie's World (by Jostein Gaarder) is a pile of tripe. Sophie's World is probably giving ZMM a run for its money as the most widely sold book that has philosophy in it, yet I think it crap, mainly because the philosophy is so dumbed down that its nigh worthless. Why would I think so? Because I've already read a lot of philosophy. In Rorty's case, philosophy is what he does for a living and I imagine that ZMM's plot didn't capture him (for whatever
highly idiosyncratic, probably inexplicable reason) and the philosophy was something he could pick up elsewhere (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, James, Dewey, etc.). In Lila's case, Pirsig tried to get mileage out of the word "metaphysics," which is immediately a strike against you. Why did Lila (and Pirsig in general) grab me and not Rorty? Probably because when I originally read Pirsig I hadn't read a lot of philosophy and I thought you _could_ get mileage out of "metaphysics." I've since dropped that aspiration, but before I did I already had come to understand Pirsig's philosophy. The contentious contention that has gotten me in so much trouble at this website is that you can drop Pirsig's fascination with the word "metaphysics" (and all of its baggage) and still get most of what Pirsig was offering.
Most people think that the MoQ is somehow extremely exclusive in what its offering, that it is extraordiarily different from everything else past, present, and future. I think this silly. I think Pirsig was participating in a general movement away from a peculiarly philosophical problem, one that sees him in bed with Dewey, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Derrida, Fish, and Rorty. I think he got good practical mileage out of it in ZMM, but not so much in Lila. When Pirsig was edifying, he was brilliant. When he was systematic, he became boring and flawed. I can get past how boring most people find Lila because I'm not bored by philosophy. I read what are generally considered "boring books" all the time. I find them exciting (when they are, at least). But in Pirsig's attempt to be systematic in Lila, I think he got trapped by some of the disease he was trying to cure, much like Dewey and Heidegger did. So when people say that Pirsig is the most original philosoph
er of this past century, I think they are sacrificing a general understanding of intellectual history in a misguided attempt to apotheosize their favorite philosopher.
Matt
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