All MOQ Discuss
I ended part 1 of my analysis of Matt Kundert's "Excavating SOM"
essay with a jubilant "Eureka" over this part which affirms my "Value of
the S/O distinction". And that this value is the intellectual level, all of it,
every last bit is plain. Again I thank Matt for excavating this
"The whole purpose of scientific method is to make valid
distinctions between the false and the true in nature, to
eliminate subjective, unreal, imaginary elements from one's
work so as to obtain an objective, true picture of reality." (236)
Matt's goes on:
> Because when we get to the finale of ZMM, there is a stunning lack of
> talk about subjects and objects. Instead, it's about rhetoric,
> dialectic, logic, reason, mythos, logos, truth, the good. I think it is
> important to take into account that ZMM is a journey, not a
> dissertation. It is attempting to bring us to a state that resembles
> Pirsig's, when he first went through it, and to do that it goes through
> the same stages he went through. But that doesn't mean theses are
> positive, like a ladder we keep going up. Its more like pulling a sled
> through the snow, picking up and dropping things as we need-except that
> Pirsig doesn't tell us when he's dropping things.
There's not so much "about subjects and objects", however ar the S/O
distinction is discovered to be a fall-out of Quality, it's about S/O's own
branches and how it developed into a SOM. That ZAMM is travelogue
with philosophical chautauquas inserted we all know.
> To see this, in Part IV and Chicago, Pirsig says "the more he studied, the
> more convinced he became that no one had yet told the damage to this world
> that had resulted from our unconscious acceptance of their [the Greeks']
> thought." (358) This wets our appetite. Then he begins the build up, which
> starts with the "mythos over logos" section (an argument that Pirsig
> commandeers, but for which I don't think he fully grasps the
> consequences). Pirsig tells us that in Greek cultures "one invariably
> finds a strong subject-object differentiation because the grammar of the
> old Greek mythos presumed a sharp natural division of subjects and
> predicates." (359) There you have it, the subject/object, mind/matter
> distinction built by-wait a second. What? "In cultures such as the
> Chinese, where subject-predicate relationships are not rigidly defined by
> grammar, one finds a corresponding absence of rigid subject-object
> philosophy." Subjects and predicates don´t sound like mind and matter to
> me. What could be the (obviously vastly underdeveloped) connection? But,
> more importantly, is that connection important? Why would Pirsig leave
> something like that so horrendously underdeveloped, just kinda' throw it
> out there and move on? I think its exactly because he is moving on. I
> think that paragraph marks a shifting of topics. Suddenly, and quite
> inexplicably, Pirsig has shifted to language use, rather than talk about
> mind and matter.
OK, I kind of agree, the language and grammar argument here is a bit
uncalled for.
> I think the topic shift is cemented in the very next two sentences: "One
> finds that in the Judeo-Christian culture, in which the Old Testament
> 'Word' had an intrinsic sacredness of its own, men are willing to
> sacrifice and live by and die for words. In this culture, a court of law
> can ask a witness to tell 'the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
> truth, so help me God,' and expect the truth to be told." (359) If we look
> at this as a shift in topics, we will be less surprised when we reach
> Pirsig's revelation of our age's spiritual crisis: "Reason was to be
> subordinate, logically, to Quality, and he was sure he would find the
> cause of its not being so back among the ancient Greeks, whose mythos had
> endowed our culture with the tendency underlying all the evil of our
> technology, the tendency"--wait for it--"to do what is 'reasonable' even
> when it isn't any good." (368) Pirsig italicizes that whole last part,
> just so we don't miss it. But if, as a reader, you had subjects and
> objects, specifically mind and matter, on the brain, you'd be totally
> thrown. "Reason and Quality had become separated and in conflict with each
> other and Quality had been forced under and reason made supreme somewhere
> back then." (368) Reason? But I thought we were talking about subjectivity
> and objectivity, mind and matter?
OK, ZAMM may be a bit helter skelter at times, but as Matt starts with
SOM had its origin in the Greek "discovery" of the Appearance/Reality
schism and the Mind/Matter version emerged only with Descartes
about two thousand years later. What Pirsig tries to convey by this
sentence
"Reason was to be subordinate, logically, to Quality,
is how - in the good old days - Aretê (Quality) was IT ALL. Then came
the thinkers' quest for "eternal principles" that came to a head with the
greatest principle - "Truth" - that (as we agreed on) developed into the
first SOM prototype "Appearance/Reality" and after this great
upheaval the quest for what is real and what is illusory is known as
REASON, hence
"Reason and Quality had become separated and in conflict
with each other and Quality had been forced under and reason
made supreme somewhere back then."
... so all this fits. No need to ask for the subject/object and mind/matter
distinctions, they are still far into the future.
> The reason nobody is caught off guard by this is because the structure of
> the narrative leads us inexorably to it. The narrative is structured so
> that we slowly forget about that whole thing about mind and matter, and
> instead start focusing on the bigger culprit: "the desiccating lifeless
> voice of dualistic reason." (370)
Well. OK!
> I now want to bridge to my second question: "Does the mind/matter dualism
> really start with Socrates?" Does that dualism start with Greek culture,
> specifically Greek philosophical culture? I don't think it does. The first
> place I'll begin to refute the idea is with Pirsig, to continue to
> solidify the idea that not even Pirsig thinks the mind/matter dualism
> central. Pirsig begins his scattered narrative about the genesis of what
> he later calls the intellectual level with the piece above about
> subject-object differentiation
Another Eureka! See. even Matt recognizes that the intellectual LEVEL
(of the later MOQ) starts with the subject/object differentiation. Why is
Mr Kundert so silent about this? Why doesn't he come to my
assistance in my fight for this obvious context?
> which is subtly transposed to grammar, a subject-predicate distinction,
> thus beginning our shift. The shift is followed through when Pirsig
> expands his narrative later in Ch. 29 on p. 381. "Early Greek
> philosophy represented the first conscious search for what was
> imperishable in the affairs of men." The rest of paragraph says nothing
> about mind and matter before it ends with "This consciousness, which
> had never existed anywhere before in the world, spelled a whole new
> level of transcendence for the Greek civilization." What's important
> is the new "consciousness," the search for "what was imperishable in
> the affairs of men."
SOM does have its origin in the great cultural upheaval in Greece, but
as we have agreed on, it did not start outrightly with neither
mind/matter nor subject/object, but with the search for principles
beyond the mythological gods. The use of the "consciousness" term
does not mean anything.
> Mind and matter do come up. In Pirsig's narrative, he says that for Greek
> philosophers "permanence was no longer the exclusive domain of the
> Immortal Gods. It was also to be found within Immortal Principles...." (382)
> Pirsig then runs down a short, pedantic list of some examples. He mentions
> that the Pythagoreans were "the first to see the Immortal Principle as
> something nonmaterial." He ends with "Anaxagoras was the first to identify
> the One as nous, meaning 'mind.'" I think these are dropped to remind us
> of our former travels, but Pirsig himself doesn't connect the dots. All he
> does add, ever so subtly is, a paragraph later, "Anaxagoras and Parmenides
> had a listener named Socrates who carried their ideas into full fruition."
> (382) Parmenides is often linked as Socrates' direct predecessor, if for
> no other reason than Plato wrote a dialogue by that name fictionalizing
> their encounter. But Anaxagoras, not so much. There are a tiny few
> allusions made (favorably) by Plato about Anaxagoras, but not a lot else.
> His placement here is entirely to remind us of the importance of "mind."
> Which Pirsig promptly proceeds to finger explicitly: What is essential to
> understand at this point is that until now there was no such thing as mind
> and matter, subject and object, form and substance. Those divisions are
> just dialectical inventions that came later. The modern mind sometimes
> tends to balk at the thought of these dichotomies being inventions and
> says, 'Well, the divisions were there for the Greeks to discover,' and you
> have to say, 'Where were they? Point to them!' And the modern mind gets a
> little confused and wonders what his is all about anyway, and still
> believes the divisions were there. (382) This is a difficult passage to
> interpret. Leaving aside Pirsig's allusion to his "discourse on Western
> ghosts", (on pages 33-6) I want to focus on how whether we should
> interpret Pirsig as saying that the Greeks created the divisions, or
> whether they were created by somebody else. Readings that give high
> credence to SOM being identified as materialism would suggest that the
> Greeks created all of those divisions together, that SOM, issuing from the
> subject/object dichotomy, all came together in a heap. I don't think they
> did. I think Pirsig shunts all of them under the SOM mantle (for some very
> good reasons), but I don't think the Greeks created them all. To interpret
> this passage as suggesting that the Greeks created them, one will hammer
> down on "until now there was no such thing as...." One will point back to
> the paragraph before where Pirsig fingers Anaxagoras as one of Socrates'
> teachers.
I'm not sure if Matt objects to the Greeks "... created the divisions, or
whether they were created by somebody else" but for the umpteenth
time it's plain that they laid down the foundations and that SOM
evolved through fits and starts to ever new versions, the mind/matter
stage only emerging with Descartes.
> To loosen the hold of this suggestion, I want to again remind people that
> Anaxagoras wasn't a literal teacher of Socrates. I think his placement in
> the previous paragraph has nothing to do with suggesting that the
> mind/matter dichotomy existed or was created by the Greeks, but that its
> there to remind us, us "modern minds," that the "mind" is important. When
> I read that paragraph, I will hammer down on "Those divisions are just
> dialectical inventions that came later." When Pirsig says that the modern
> mind balks and says that these divisions were "there for the Greeks to
> discover," I think we have to be careful about taking it too literally. I
> think the important bit is Pirsig's reference to the "modern mind." For
> the modern mind, we do have these distinctions. But I think we need to
> gloss forward Pirsig's statement that they "came later" and remember that
> Pirsig, a page before, says that the "first conscious search for what was
> imperishable" was what "spelled a whole new level of transcendence for the
> Greek civilization." When Pirsig goes on to talk about what Plato and
> Socrates did, he doesn't talk about mind or matter, subject or object,
> form or substance. He says that Plato and Socrates, "are defending the
> Immortal Principle of the Cosmologists against what they consider to be
> the decadence of the Sophists. Truth. Knowledge. That which is independent
> of what anyone thinks about it. The ideal that Socrates died for. ... He
> damns them because they threaten mankind's first beginning grasp of the
> idea of truth." (383) And then: "And yet, Phaedrus understands, what he is
> saying about Quality is somehow opposed to all this." (384)
Another crucial issue, one that I have pointed to on innumeral
occasions. The Sophist issue. It's plain as day that "Truth, knowledge.
That which is independent of what anyone thinks ..." is the budding
SOM's "objective camp" and that the Sophists' represent the ditto
"subjective camp". As said all SOM's "O's spawns corresponding 'S's,
and this about the Sophists being defenders of the old Homeric Time
"Aretê" to be identified with Quality (of the MOQ) is Pirsig's greatest
blunder. I mean, no blunder while writing ZAMM (where in a MOQ
retrospect it is the Social Quality) but devastating to the final MOQ by
Pirsigs refusal to "translate" ZAMM. It has given it (the MOQ) the
impression of being some subjective NewAge-ish "mystic" something
.
This requires another instalment, so end of part two
Bodvar
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