Marsha:
I am implying nothing. You stated "Pirsig says the MOQ is a form of mainstream
American pragmatism." I posted the RMP quote:
"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. I have proposed it because it seems to me
that when you look into it carefully it makes more sense than all the other
things the world is supposed to be composed of. One particular strength lies in
its applicability to quantum physics, where substance has been dismissed but
nothing except arcane mathematical formulae has really replaced it."
(A brief summary of the Metaphysics of Quality, October 2005)
Maybe you need a reading lesson, because there was no mention in the RMP quote
of 'American pragmatism' being an exception.
On Mar 6, 2011, at 4:14 PM, david buchanan wrote:
>
> 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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