Oh, don't get me wrong, Marsha. You're absolutely right that "ambiguity is hot"--that's half the fun of Elizabethan sonnets. My problem, if I have one, is that, it's not that some philosophers act more like poets, but that some would like to claim the virtues of philosophy _and_ poetry without any of the vices of either. If Pirsig is the cosmological poet we think he is, then people have to own up a little more readily than I've seen them occasionally capable to the fact that studied ambiguity opens vistas of thought, but sacrifices to those vistas clarity.
You can either say big things or small things. The bigger the thing you say, the more small things your going to crush underfoot. Some of them you mean to, but we shouldn't be surprised if there are a few accidents along the way. Or, to put it another way: you can't appreciate ambiguity and say it isn't there at the same time. Or, one more way: I wouldn't have a problem if some weren't so priggish. Matt > Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2008 06:02:45 -0400 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [MD] What is metaphysics to you? > > At 11:23 PM 3/28/2008, you wrote: > > >Matt: > >I think it is one of the virtues of most of the MD interpreters of > >Pirsig that they don't get bogged down by this and self-consciously > >just use M1, but one of the vices is that they sometimes often turn > >a blind eye to the ambiguity. (But, on the other hand, that's a > >scholastic issue that one can ignore when doing philosophy.) > > Greetings Matt, > > Blind eye? As one who is addicted to enigma, I think ambiguity is hot! > > Marsha _________________________________________________________________ In a rush? Get real-time answers with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_realtime_042008 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
