(from April 12, 2005) ----- Robin and David suggest more or less the same reading of the philosophy/philosophology distinction as Steve. Robin initially said that a philosopher is anyone “that does not blindly follow the ‘truths’ found by someone before him.” Robin has since capitulated on that view for reasons similar to those I offered above. Robin said that a philosophologist is someone who uses static patterns to combat static patterns, while a philosopher is someone who “uses his own dynamic/creative beliefs and experiences to create a new philosophy or to identify with an existing one.” Robin said she noticed the contradiction here. The problem, I think, is
the same one I pointed out with Steve and the exultation of the “internal struggle that creates Quality.” Beliefs are static patterns, and so the apparent contradiction in Robin’s formulation. But if we accept that our beliefs are static patterns, and that most of our lives are static, but it is the interplay of warring static patterns that breeds Dynamic creativeness (as in my description of how new arguments are born), I think we can see how creativeness should be praised. I think this formulation also pays better homage to Pirsig’s description of static latching, where Dynamic innovations move us to a higher plateau of Quality, but then become crusted over as they become old, and eventually become thrown away as new Dynamic innovations are created on the shoulders of the old ones. As Dewey would say, the bad is simply a discarded good. But if we accept these views of creativity, I think we’ve left the philosopher/philosophologist distinction behind. As Erin has said, the application to cases makes the whole thing very blurry. The reason is because the distinction is supposed to be for deciding who is and isn’t a philosopher and it isn’t completely clear how creativity plays into it. If the distinction just breaks down into a distinction between originality and unoriginality, why have the philosopher/philosophologist distinction when we already have the originality/unoriginality distinction? The reason for the confusion is because Pirsig builds the distinction around two descriptors, not one. “Creative” is on the “philosopher” side of the distinction, but so is “inattentive to history.” The second descriptor gives us an easy basis for applying the distinction (“Does he pay attention to the history of philosophy?”), but the first descriptor is the term of approbation. Pirsig conflates “creativity” with “inattention to history” to create an easy way to apply the distinction and a reason to. Without the creativity descriptor, people would begin to wonder what’s wrong with reading history. But with the creativity descriptor, we have our reason: because you’re not being creative or original. However, my argument has been (among others) that the original/unoriginal distinction cuts _across_ the historical/unhistorical distinction. But this equivocation in our description of the philosophy/philosophology distinction is what leads David to first say, “philosophology is when the writing is very static and offers nothing original,” but then to add, “but that's not to say there is zero creativity in philosophologists.” This equivocation is bred because of the way Pirsig constructs the distinction. So when Robin asks, “Would you say either role (philosophologer or philosopher) is morally better than the other, and on which basis?” the only reason we may scratch our head a little and wonder is because of Pirsig’s conflation. If you want to emphasize creativity, you’ll say that philosophers are better. If you want to emphasize the fun and bonuses of reading history, you’ll deny that one is better than the other. What we have to remember, though, is that for Pirsig, the distinction was created to distinguish real from fake philosophers. And real philosophers are creative and inattentive to history, though it is unclear how Pirsig sees the two descriptors being related. The only thing I can figure is that he thinks people who know less about history are more likely to be creative, much like the baby who smiles in wonder at everything because she’s experiencing everything for the first time. But should we really expect the baby to make significant innovations in philosophy? I’d like to leave this for the moment to rephrase my argument to perhaps make it more clear. I think people are confused about my argument because they think I’m arguing that historically-conscious philosophers (specifically philosophers steeped in the history of philosophy) are the real philosophers. This isn’t true. My argument is that Pirsig’s distinction _forces_ us to decide who the real philosophers are, when the spirit of his philosophy tells us that we _shouldn’t_ decide. Because of the peculiar thing philosophy is, gathering wisdom and seeing how things hang together, there is no way to pin down philosophy except for parochial reasons of expediency because there is so much wisdom to be had because there are so many _things_ to be hung together. You can’t cut a distinction between history and substance because there is no substance outside of our mostly unconscious, educative reception of the history of humankind. If you do pin down a substance (as you’ll have to), it will be for parochial, expedient reasons, i.e. personal reasons, based on the type of wisdom you want to generate, the types of things you want to hang together. My focus (or “substance”) has been on the history of Western philosophy because those are the things I want to hang together. What I’m not doing is saying that what I do makes me a real philosopher. We are all real philosophers. Pirsig’s emphasis on personal creativity comes from Pirsig’s love of genius. He wants us all to try and overcome ourselves, i.e. overcome our inherited static patterns, our inherited “train of collective consciousness.” This is the theme that resonates so strongly with the existentialist theme of “authenticity.” To become authentic is to engage in a Nietzschean project of self-overcoming in which we, in Nietzsche’s words, “become who we are.” But I don’t think this love of genius is motivated simply by the personal need to be authentic. Throughout Pirsig’s works he’s trying to help us out of the spiritual crisis of our age. I think Pirsig’s emphasis on creativity, genius, _Dynamic Quality_ stems from his recognition that humanity’s geniuses are the ones who have created who we all are, that, following Shelley, poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Pirsig wants us all to reach for this creative genius, reach for Dynamic Quality, and he wants us to do so, not simply to be unlike anybody else who has ever been, but because it will raise humanity to a higher plateau. This is where I think Pirsig’s claim that we _need_ both static and Dynamic Quality is important. Humanity’s train is static patterns of Quality and we need brujos to expand the train, to help us all become better. But, contrary to the way Pirsig sometimes writes, I do not think there is any point in saying that it is better to be a brujo than an underlaborer. We need both to move the train along. ----- Matt _________________________________________________________________ Get back to school stuff for them and cashback for you. http://www.bing.com/cashback?form=MSHYCB&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT_MSHYCB_BackToSchool_Cashback_BTSCashback_1x1 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/
