Thanks for the effort, Matt. I will dive in a pick apart:
> What Pirsig misses (and other people > peeved about their heroes being ignored and then reaching > for antiprofessionalist rhetoric) is that the process of > "ignoring" _and_ "saving" (that being what you'd like to do > to Royce and everyone here to Pirsig) is already internal to > academic processes because those are just the regular > processes of intellectual maturity. First, I don't feel especially oriented around "saving" Royce. I don't think he's in any danger of being forgotten. In fact, I see signs of him gaining ground these days with issues of community and bioethics really coming into focus in the future. I'm more concerned with Pirsig because his defenders don't really seem to agree upon him enough to make any lasting legacy in American Philosophy. Royce was pretty successful in his time, at least, and taken seriously enough by academia to be a force. He got some buildings named after him or I wouldn't have heard of him, probably. Web searches reveal new philosophers adopting him and a school of thought evolving around him which persists. What I'm picking at now is that conflation of the two disparate "ignorances" of each, by Academia, for similar reasons - unconscious reasons. That's my topic of interest and inquiry. Why ignore Pirsig AND Royce. They come at the same problems of VFM from differing perspectives and it's like "I piped and you did not dance, I wept and you did not mourn" (biblical allusion, for all you atheists out there - Shakespeare used 'em too; don't get your panties in a twist) > The only way to reverse > the process of ignoring by saving is by getting in the game, > which the rhetoric of anti-professionalism implicitly abhors, > You think Phaedrus implicitly abhored "getting in the game"? I'd say rather he abhored the fact that nobody'd play. Academia despises new philosophy. More to learn! Furthermore, in a SOM universe of stately competitive individuals, assertion of another's excellence implicitly degrades my own. We can measure who has more philosophology on any subject crammed into our skulls, but we can't measure true value of thought except by quantity of acceptance. He who dies the most footnoted wins. Ignore and discourage the new and questing in favor of the old and established historical. That's the safe way. That's the main way it works. > antiprofessionalist rhetoric just sounds like > whining, A bit, yes it does. "Sour grapes" exist in the minds of the fox, not the coyote. I mean I know *I'm* not whining. And neither does Pirsig, in the end. The Academy can go their way, we'll go ours. That's way the choices have fallen. In my view, the professional philosophers can keep their club, their secret handshake and their esoteric squabbles. I want to forge for myself the best conception of being, the highest quality metaphysics I can wrestle from life and books and conversation. Disparagement doesn't discourage me. does make me feisty tho. even if one agrees that Royce should be saved > (e.g., his notion of the Beloved Community is very > important to leftist thought, like MLK). The rhetoric means > nothing, does nothing to help your cause--only patient, > professional-looking arguments about why he should play a > bigger role than he does would do that. > > Oh Pbbllllpt-t-t-t. to your "professional-looking argument". You're just arguing for YOUR brand of sophistry, YOUR preference of rhetorical combat. Meanwhile demonstrating absolutely NONE of what you state you value! Your reply is full of assumption, opinion and prejudice with no real philosophically sound argumentation to any of the myriad offerings I've posted. And yet you hold up the flag of "professional-looking arguments". All very high- sounding and virtue-laden rhetorically, now lets see some actual demonstration, big boy. Put up or shut up as we say at recess on the playground. > Antiprofessionalist rhetoric is _only_ aimed at critiquing > Academe--but it _only_ does it by criticizing the _form_ of > it, rather than the content, and it is not the form you are > worrying about, as you say below, but the content. It is > one thing to do historical and sociological analyses of the > culture-form known as the "academic" (like Kuhn and > Bourdieu). It is quite another to try and motivate those > analyses as criticisms. And I just, myself, don't see a > pernicious form of ignoring of Royce, or Santayana for that > matter, in the Academy. If they are worthy, they'll find > their disciples. Just look at Nietzsche--he didn't become > part of the family until Heidegger brought him into the fold. > Or Melville--totally ignored in his time. > > Not sure Matt, what "motivate those analyses" means. People, I can try and motivate (tho I mostly don't try and do that) but analyses? Do you mean motivate academics to analyze? That would make sense. That's probably what you mean. I wish your argument was more professional-looking, I could make sense of it then. I touched upon time and patience. So I do agree with that part. The pernicious form of ignoring came about after Royce's death and after WWII, imo. The scientific manipulation of the atom gave science a godlike position in society, of holding the highest value in an otherwise valueless cosmos. Rampant opportunity for corruptions of all kinds to occur. Pirsig uncovered afterward what Royce warned about beforehand. You have to read a lot of Royce to see this, you can't take my word for it, and it seems your interest is not piqued enough by my non-professional-looking argumentation techniques to investigate for yourself, so... as Bo said, "this discussion is hell-bent on not recognizing". John the anti-hell-bent. 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