Matt said to dmb: ...you'll recall I said that it wasn't (exactly) about the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Pirsig, or Rorty. I was using their particulars as symbols for larger issues. Which is to say, I used some things I'd picked up on each of them in their context (scholarly facts) to elaborate a story about, roughly, professional philosophy. It's a trick Pirsig does in his books, in fact. dmb says:Yea, okay. But you'll recall that you advertised it here as "another attempt to circle Socrates, Plato, Pirsig and Rorty". And it began by asking if there is "a way of coordinating these thoughts". These thoughts being, "Socrates essentially defined philosophy as a common, basic human activity when he said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Plato said that philosophy was for the very few people who were able to do it. Pirsig said philosophy isn’t worth doing if it doesn’t help with life. Rorty said philosophy is pretty remote from life." You answered right away, saying, "I think they can, in their way, fit together coherently". I'm not quite sure how to square that intro with what you're saying about the piece now, exactly, but whatever. I just wanted to remind you where and how this got started. You're acting like I'm just an unreasonable crazy person to have expected anything about the philosophies of Plato or Pirsig.
Matt said:This might be the silliest argument we've ever had. If you'd just said, "I liked the bit about the parallel between ZMM and the Republic. Though, since my predelictions lie in developing the side of Pirsig aimed at mysticism and systematic metaphysics, I'd wished you'd talked a bit more about mysticism than just the one tidbit about Orphism." But no--you gotta' make it a whole production about my continued complete misapprehension of Pirsig. Can't you just take sunshine shone for what it is and let the rest lie as it's supposed to in a throw-away piece like that? I swear, it's like you'll make hay out of anything. dmb says: Again, this so called "throw-away piece" was presented as a gift and you were the gift-bearer. I'm not making hay out of "anything". Why do you insist on trivializing my concerns? I think it is not only unfair and inaccurate to characterize the MOQ's mysticism as "my predeliction", I think it also begs the central question. I've been making a case for the centrality of mysticism for a long time and you're just not into it. This is the heart of our disagreement. Obviously, in response to your throw-away piece, the issue has come up again. Your response this time is a pretty good microcosm of the whole thing too. It's just my interests and your interests or its just my prediliction, my focus. It's just that you were REALLY offering a coherent picture of their respective attitudes about philosophy. It's just that you're telling a different story. Don't you see how all that is just one big series of question begging? The question is not whether you're interested or how important I think it is. Is mysticism central to Pirsig's way of doing philosophy? Answering that question hinges on the textual evidence. It's really that simple. What do the books say? Yes, yes, yes, I know interpretations are unavoidable and all that. If a guy wanted to make an exhaustive case using every piece of relevant textual evidence, using just the two books, I'd guess you have at least 200 quotes. I really don't get the doubt. Frankly, it seems kind of irrational to deny it and intellectual irresponsible to shrugg it off. But I'm the freak. Cause I think it matters. Okay. Whatever. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don’t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage1_052009 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/
