It seems telling to me Matt that Rorty uses the phrase "mystical experience" as opposed to "mysticism" ... being the creative process.
I think your problem (Dave's problem with Rorty) is not so much difficulty with mysticism-as-(radical)-experience, but "radical-experience-as-poetry" Sounds good to me. Any language used expresses the experience without need of any kind of objectification. Ian On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 3:54 AM, Matt Kundert <[email protected]> wrote: > > I'm not around much on the MD any more these days, so I'm > unfamiliar with current themes in the dialogues, and with new > partners to the conversation (or with old partners who have perhaps > evolved). But pragmatism is a source of interest for Pirsigians, and > one of the more well-known Anglo-American philosophers to > self-identify as a pragmatist at the end of the 20th century was > Richard Rorty. I don't know if anyone talks about Rorty much these > days, but if newcomers have found his association with Pirsig > strange, then I'm likely the one to be blamed. I wasn't the first to > bring him up, but I made him ubiquitous for a while, and had I to do > it all over again, I would've done it differently. > > Be that as it may, my most passionate and dogged interlocutor in the > last decade has been David Buchanan. Dave has long contended that > the radical empiricism of James (which can be found in Dewey's > Experience and Nature) is the gateway to wisdom in the area of > philosophy, being especially a kind of philosophical mysticism. He > has further excoriated pragmatisms without an attendant radical > empiricism, along the lines Pirsig laid out in Lila, but also along the > lines that to deny radical empiricism is to deny a place for mysticism > within one's philosophical vision. > > I have ho-hummed my way through defenses of Rorty over the past > few years, mainly because the problem eludes me. If James and > Dewey's radical empiricism isn't a kind of Platonic realism, then it is > nothing that Rorty would've felt strongly about. His extant remarks > about radical empiricism have always appeared to me easily > rectifiable with most of what Dave takes Pirsig to be saying. Dave > takes--as well he should--solace in the fact that many philosophers > excoriate Rorty for the same things he's always had a problem with > in Rorty. I just sigh and patiently wait for the target to be removed > from the most infamous American philosopher in the last 30 years. > Too much heat, not enough light. > > The toughest part of my ho-humming has been the mysticism part. > Dave has taken his silence to be deafening, speaking volumes. I've > always been skeptical about so construing it. One of his rare > off-hand remarks was recently flipped out into my conversation with > John. "Overcoming the Tradition," Rorty's first essay comparing the > philosophical visions of Heidegger and Dewey, was written in the > context of Heidegger's avoidance of philosophical conversation--the > kind exemplified by American philosophy journals--and though not > exactly "mysticism" as we usually understand it, it has always > structured my understanding of what Rorty thought about mysticism, > which is to say, how it functions in the conversation of humankind. > For years I've tried to construe mysticism as a kind of poetry, an > idea that first came to me in reading that essay, but it never really > seemed to catch on much (though it's the same thing Santayana > was saying, too, something I take solace in). > > But a couple days ago, a posthumous book, An Ethics for Today: > Finding Common Ground Between Philosophy and Religion, came > out which contained a paper Rorty read at a conference in Italy in > 2005. The paper opposes "fundamentalism" to "relativism" (the > latter defined, characteristically, as the "denial of fundamentalism") > and dialogues with a few of the current pope's writings about > relativism and different worldviews. Nothing new is elucidated > about Rorty's position in the paper, though a few new turns of > phrase are thrown out that might be helpful for us secular > humanists who are anti-clerical though not anti-spiritual. > > The interesting part was the Q&A. Somebody finally asked him > directly about mysticism. > > ----- > A MEMBER OF THE AUDIENCE -- The problem that concerns me is > whether mysticism is absolutely to be excluded from your way of > thinking, or not. The real sense of mysticism, I mean something > transcendental--does it exist or not in your vision? > > RICHARD RORTY -- I think that the mystics, like the poets, are > among the great imaginative geniuses who have helped human > moral and intellectual progress. Where I think we disagree is on > the question of whether the mystical must be a way of putting us in > touch with the transcendent. As I see it, mystical experience is a > way of leaping over the boundaries of the language one speaks. > Leaps over those boundaries lead to the creation of new language. > And the creation of new language leads to intellectual and moral > progress. (18) > ----- > > This just confirmes the hunches I always had about Rorty. It's > hard not to see the relationship between Dynamic Quality and > static latches in those lines. It's not an argument against Dave, of > course: the argument isn't about what Rorty thinks, but what the > best way forward is. I like the rhetoric of mysticism-as-poetry; > Dave likes the rhetoric of mysticism-as-radical-empiricism. I don't > know how to debate the two. > > Matt > > 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/md/archives.html > 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/md/archives.html
