From: Destination Quality (planetquality@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Mar 06 2004 - 19:17:52 GMT
hi Matt how are you? Are you still working on that Lessing essay? To my
sincere regret I have to say that this probably was a one time only
appearance of me on the forum. I just do not have enough time and am afraid
that will seriously reduce the quality of my input - as can be seen below -
I can just shine a faint light on issues so big that I am in need of a sun
to highlight them. I am not capable yet of producing such light. Hope you
understand.
Chris :
pssst, i will let you in on a secret - there are no levels just as there are
no Kantian categories. Do you know why? Because they are static, do you know
what happens to static 'entities' in the struggle for life, or in the
struggle for truth? They do not survive. Panta rei. What does survive? That
which is mobile, insecure, refutable, aposteriori, dynamic. How do we judge
apriori, we cannot. ho to discern degeneracy or DQ, I'm sorry my philosophic
friends, we can do nothing more but wait and see. A priori levels are
platonic forms, Pirsig indeed is a platonist, a neoplatonist actually. Does
the name Plotinus ring a bell? So much in a few sentences and so much more
to tell. Ok one secret for the Skutvikians among you: there is no
subject-object thinking, how could there be such thinking when there is no
subject?
Matt:
BUT, I think saying "there are no levels" and "there is no subject-object
thinking" is slightly misleading. After we hand in our finding metaphors for
making metaphors, we can reconfigure some of the old distinctions, mainly
because language wouldn't be a useful tool if it didn't make distinctions.
What we would stop doing is reading these distinctions into the stars. We
would stop suggesting that we found them in the heavens, and instead follow
Pirsig in suggesting that we are drawing them in the sand, here on Earth. In
particular, there is subject-object thinking as long as it remains useful to
differentiate yourself from others. When we knock SOM off its pedestal and
it changes into SOT, its the same de-reification that post-Derrideans make
of the fall of "logocentrism" into "the play of binary oppositions." There's
nothing dangerous about binary oppositions, as long as you've learned the
lesson of not hypostatizing them.
Chris:
Nice subtle statement there, the difference between finding and inventing(or
finding and making as you express it) is of great importance in stripping
metaphysics in general and the MOQ in particular. After not reading the
distinctions in the stars however I want to take it a step further and say
that we not only must bring them back to earth; we have to be even more
attentive that we do not project these eternal ideas into our earth, into
our language. What I mean to say is that we not only have to get rid of
'transcendental ontology' but even more we need to get rid of 'transcendent
epistemology' (notice the dialectic: transcendental - transcendent - (you
say utility) I will leave it to: ?????(gna)) as displayed in Kant's work and
where we see the sad remains from in contemporary philosophy. These sad
remains nowadays is called logic; what else is a logical rule but a
transcendent i_dont_know_what - form perhaps?
I think that what i just said is actually the same as you are trying to say
with your example of the fall of "logocentrism" into "the play of binary
oppositions" though I must admit I am not familiar at all with either
Derrida or post-Derridians, please enlighten me on that matter. For now I
assume this fall is something like the transition from the early to the late
Wittgenstein; though a 'fall' seems to me a highly inapropriate expression;
how about an ascent?
I still have great problems with SOT though and I have very strong doubts
that SOT is useful to differentiate yourself from others because language
does not differentiate us from others; au contraire. There is a link here to
consciousness which seems to have has a quite similar structure and just as
there is no such thing as an individuated consciousness - it is a "net of
communication" in Nietzsche's words - by the same token there is no
individuated subject that by saying certain words differentiate him or
herself from others. Language is not a tool that a subject uses freely to
his or her benefit, we cannot step out of it. By your assumptions we have to
use a historical social
construction to express our individuality; doesn't that sound terribly
contradictive?
As for the other part, the usefulness as you call it there also rises some
problems because it is a hard to say what indeed is useful - maybe it is
'the most calamitious stupidity of which we shall perish some day' as the
Plato of modern times said, who knows.
Chris
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