Hey DMB, Matt said: But, as monists, particularly mystics, like to point out, the world is all interconnected. In this regard, I used to like to say that clearing up economic/political problems should be the priority, but now I'm coming to think that it might be a precondition to really actually making progress on spiritual problems.
DMB said: Really? I tend to think its the other way around. Matt: Yeah, that sounds about what I thought you and Pirsig (and certainly Heidegger) thought. That might be the difference that everything else stems from--politics first v. spirit first. Let me also add, that because of the nature of cultural change, what Dewey called the means/ends continuum (where you decide on means to get to an end, but then as you enact the means, your end changes, so you have to perform the whole routine again), that we'll be doing them all at once, at about the same time. I don't think we will (nor should we) neglect the spiritual and focus all our cultural energy on the political. That's why I do philosophy--it is a focus on, what I call though others may find it a perversion of the word, the spiritual, though I try and stay up on politics. There are others who focus on politics and I think our culture may be better off with this kind of division of labor. DMB said: 1) t seems you can find Platonism in just about any word, any metaphor. I'm beginning to detect a certain Platonism in your aversion to Platonism. In this case, I think such philosophical paranoia is unwarranted and even a little bit annoying. Matt: Yeah, you've mentioned that before. But I've been right before about my "paranoia," remember? Absolute truth and all that? Besides, you are right, you can find Platonism in any statement, and possibly even in any metaphor--"it's more like a personality disorder" and all that. But some metaphors make it harder than others to develop Platonic angles. With the health metaphor, I don't take it to be that hard. But like I said before, have at it--I prefer different metaphors, and if my reasons are annoying, then what can I do? I've accepted that we both annoy each other. Matt said: But whatever: I'm happy we are all anti-Platonists. In the second case, I think radical empiricism and mysticism are far too specific for "solutions" to a spiritual crisis. I'm not even sure the language of "crisis" and "problem" are good ones to use in this respect. DMB said: I'm trying to get you to make a connection here. What if SOM and Platonism ARE the spiritual crisis? Then it starts to look more like we're on the same side. Matt: Yeah, I understand what you are trying to say, I just disagree. We are largely on the same side and in a qualified sense, SOM and Platonism and other monikers drawn from specialized traditions of discourse (in this case philosophy) _are_ the spiritual crisis, but I tend to think that that inflates the ego of philosophers so I try and stay away from such reductionistic formulations (which stem from the "are"). I'm not prepared to say that people's individual problems in their own individual lives are Platonic problems, because that tends to lead one to think that one must then become a Plato-buster, or at least that I'm saying they should become Plato-busters, which would involve learning philosophy and all that jazz. I think people's individual spiritual problems are more specific than that. It's only when we look wide, at the whole culture, do people's problems homogenize together, but I think the downside to that is that we might tend to overinflate our own angle on the problem. I don't know, I read a lot of stuff about culture's problems and all that, and I like to collage them together, and it is not as if I don't have my own ideas about culture and all that, but I'm just trying to put my finger on a tone that I don't like. Maybe it is just a tone. Maybe it is something like this: when I talk to other philosophers, it is easy to get away with--and indeed, important to the conversation itself that we be allowed to get away with--reducing large cultural issues, etc., to "philosophical terms," which is tautological for "the terms philosophers use when talking to each other." This allows us to hone our weapons. But I don't just talk to other philosophers, I also talk to friends, co-workers, family members, lovers, barflies, strangers on the bus, etc., etc. When talking to non-philosophers, I don't find philosophical terms useful at all, but I do find bits of wisdom I've discovered through my "special" philosophical endeavors that can be translated into more general terms and applied to areas that other people can relate to. It is because of this translation that has to occur that I try and avoid what I earlier called "reductionistic formulations." It is because I've been in situations many times where something comes up, and I know what I want to say, but I know the person won't understand me unless 1) I re-educate them (which you can only do so much of, given the space of a finite conversation and breadth of your interlocutor--and if you want to avoid looking like a prick: "Well, if you only understood philosophy like I do....") or 2) you translate what you want to say into terms that they will understand. Because of this experience, and because I don't think I'm better than everybody else at life _in general_, I've come to think there is a cogent analogy between the language of philosophy and that of common sense, of everyday life and the language of English and that of French--just as we don't want to say, because we can translate between English and French, that the problems of French are really problems of English, so should we also not say that either philosophy or common sense/everyday life can be reduced into the other. DMB said: I think its inconsistent to say we need to de-Platonize the culture and then claim there is no large cultural problem to be solved philosophically. Again, if the problem is metaphysical, then the solution will be found at that level too. Matt: Yeah, that was the irony I mentioned that I don't take too seriously. By "de-Platonizing" culture, I don't mean something that only philosophy can do. I don't think there is a metaphysical puzzle that we need to solve in order to move our culture forward. I think all levels of life are interconnected in such a complicated way that it is pointless to think that there is only one thing we need to do to move our culture forward to a better future. This, I think, is what Dewey meant when he said that philosophy gets its problems thrown up on its shores by the larger culture. We are reacting to larger cultural patterns, and philosophy can (and should) add its opinion, its angle, to the larger cultural conversation, but there isn't a one to one equation here. You are right: metaphysical problems can only be truly _solved_ (as opposed to evaded or dissolved) at the metaphysical, philosophical level. But I surely would never characterize: 1) our culture, any culture, as having a single _problem_, as opposed to many different kinds of problems and 2) one of our problems as a _metaphysical_ problem. I'm sure you would agree to (1), but (2) is where we part ways. So let me put it this way: we can formulate a strand of the cultural picture in metaphysical/philosophical terms, and try dealing with it in those terms, but I think we must 1) avoid reducing the strand we picked out to the terms we are currently using to deal with it and 2) be careful in our suggestions when we move back from our specialized terms (who, after all, talks about "metaphysics" in everyday life?) to the cultural strand we picked out and the larger populace concerned by the same problems with that strand. I wish it were as simple as fixing up philosophy and then disseminating it out. But it isn't. (That, I might add, was a Platonic dream.) And I don't think you really think so, either, but maybe that's the tone I hear. DMB said: I'm not recommending a self-help program or trying to interfere in your spiritual life. We're just talking about how to interpret what these various philosophers are saying. What does it mean to give up Platonism, certainty, fixed truths, otherworldly truths? It means living in the here and now, flexibly, dynamically, with eyes wide open to the ordinary world. That's the kind of mysticism I'm talking about. Its just the obvious alternative to what already bugs you. Its like you're only a fraction of an inch away by choice already and yet you recoil from it. It baffles me. It really does. Matt: Well, we're not _just_ talking about how to interpret these other philosophers. We are also talking about what's good philosophy, what's good for our culture. It just so happens that you line up pretty well with Pirsig, and I do with Rorty. I think your sense about "cultural illness" is right about Pirsig, but I don't think it is the best way forward (which is why I interpret Pirsig's spirit differently than you do). But I don't think your sense of Rorty is quite right yet. But if you want to call me a member of a tradition of mysticism for being an anti-Platonist, I'm fine with that. I conceded quite a long time ago on the issue of mysticism being essentially Platonic. I don't think it is, just like nothing is, but can be so interpreted. So, if philosophical mysticism is a tradition that contains an array of positions, we can just say that I specialize in a number of them, but not all of them. And I agree: I've been saying for quite some time that we're only a fraction away from each other. And yet, so I say from my perspective, you recoil from me. It used to baffle me. It really did. Now I don't get so excited. Matt _________________________________________________________________ Change the world with e-mail. 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