dmb said:
... Pirsig says the MOQ is a form of mainstream American pragmatism.
Considering that, I think it's obvious that comparisons with James would only
be helpful and illuminating.
Marsha quoted Pirsig:
The Metaphysics of Quality is not intended to be within any philosophic
tradition, although obviously it was not written in a vacuum. My first
awareness that it resembled James' work came from a magazine review long after
“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” was published. The Metaphysics of
Quality's central idea that the world is nothing but value is not part of any
philosophic tradition that I know of. ... (From a brief summary of the
Metaphysics of Quality, October 2005)
dmb says:
You seem to be implying that comparing Pirsig with James entails a claim that
Pirsig's ideas ARE intended to be within a certain philosophical tradition. But
that would negate the many comparisons to James that Pirsig himself makes. That
would negate the similarities he claims between Taoism and Buddhism and
Northrop's philosophy too, as if these comparisons can only confine Pirsig's
work rather than illuminate it or help us understand it.
What a completely bogus assertion! Is there a better way to get a handle on any
author's thought? If there is, I'm sure we'd all like to know about it.
When you look at that quote in the full context it's quite clear that Pirsig's
concern is that philosophological categories will be used to dismiss or
pigeon-hole the MOQ as some unoriginal duplication of some previously existing
tradition. If you can just slap a label on it, you're done with it and need not
think about it any longer. Nobody is using James or pragmatism like that.
Directly following the passage you quoted, Pirsig goes on to say:
During the writing of the MOQ a long search was made through an encyclopedia of
philosophy to see if the MOQ was repeating what someone else had said. And this
was so stated in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. None of the
traditional European philosophers seemed to match in any close way. The closest
finds were Plotinus, Lao Tsu, and Professor F.S.C. Northrop of Yale University.
These similarities have been acknowledged many times. ...[]... I also have a
concern of my own. This is the concern that philosophers, instead of coming to
grips with the philosophy at hand, sometimes dismiss it by saying, “Oh he is
saying the same as someone else,” or “someone else has said it much better.”
This is the latter half of the well known conservative argument that some new
idea is (a) no good because it hasn't been heard before or (b) it is no good
because it has been heard before. If, as has been noted by R.C. Zaehner, once
the Oxford University Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics, I am saying
the same thing as Aristotle; and if, as has been noted in the Harvard
Educational Review, I am saying the same thing as William James; and if as has
been noted now that I may be saying the same thing as Spinoza: then why has no
one ever noticed that Aristotle and Spinoza and William James are all saying
the same thing? This kind of commentary has a parallel in literary criticism
where various authors are compared to one another in an easy way without any
serious attempt to fathom what any of them are really saying. So, if Hemingway
says death is a terrible thing, why then Hemingway is saying the same thing as
Shakespeare! What a discovery! And Shakespeare has said it so much better. Who
needs to read Hemingway?
dmb continues:
Reviewers made many different suggestions. Considering the fact that Pirsig
complains about Aristotle's metaphysics of substance in almost every chapter
and calls him an "asshole" to boot, that comparison hardly seems plausible. The
comparison to Hegel isn't crazy because Phaedrus was some kind of monist and
the MOQ is monistic in a sense. It's plausible enough that Pirsig feels the
need to explicitly deny it as he's identifying with pragmatism.
"The MOQ is a continuation of the mainstream of twentieth century American
philosophy, It is a form of pragmatism, of instrumentalism, which says the test
of the true is the good. It adds that this good is not a social code or some
intellectualized Hegelian Absolute. It is direct everyday experience." (Lila
366)
Pirsig tells us when his ideas are similar, when and where he finds "fits and
matches that no amount selective reading could contrive". He tells us where
"none ..seemed to match in any close way" and he tells us what his "good" is
not like (not like some Hegelian Absolute). He tells us Taoism is great match,
that he was originally inspired by Northrop's work, and that he went home and
gave up after the Benares philosophy professor smiled and said "yes", the bombs
that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory. All these things give us
insight into MOQ's meaning and even Pirsig uses such comparisons.
I think there is no merit at all to your complaints. Finding differences and
similarities like these is just a normal way to learn about stuff. It works for
everything from comparative mythology to comparative anatomy. The Onion ran a
big bold headline with exclamation points, as if it were announcing some
HUGE!!! discovery. "Scholar Compares Idea to other Idea!!!", it said. Comparing
Pirsig to James does not confine Pirsig to James. Pirsig's claim that the MOQ
is a form of pragmatism does not prevent the MOQ from also being very similar
to Taoism or Buddhism. These are comparisons, not mutually exclusive claims
about the essence of the MOQ. And the suggestion that making such comparisons
is something other than completely normal is literally a joke. Those guys at
the Onion are hilarious but you're just being ridiculous, which shares a root
word with ridicule.
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