Matt said to Arlo:
... I think centering on Nietzsche as carving out a conceptual space that is
similar to the conceptual space that Pirsig would later try to carve out is an
important direction in comparative, intellectual-historical analysis. When I
was assigned ZMM in Phil 101, my professor ran very successfully the parallel
between Nietzsche's Apollonian/Dionysian and Pirsig's early classic/romantic
split.
dmb says:
I heard Rorty say that from a European perspective Pragmatism is just what the
Americans could get out of Nietzsche. The crowd laughed at that. Interestingly,
I think, an inquiry into values was central to Nietzsche, James and Pirsig and
despite their very different and very literary styles, they can all speak to
professionals and non-professionals simultaneously. They all do philosophy with
the soul of an artist. Dewey too. The four horsemen of the apocalypse, four
awesome dudes smashing Platonism to smithereens. It should be a movie.
What really impressed me about Nietzsche's "Tragedy" was the way he attacked
"aesthetic Socratism". I took this to be totally in line with Pirsig's
complaints about the subordination of Quality to intellect and his attempt to
resurrect the reputation of the Sophists as very much like Nietzsche's aim to
restore the Dionysian element. We can see the Socratic demand for
intelligibility at work throughout Plato's dialogues but, interestingly, his
"Ion" was at the top of BOTH reading lists when I took Philosophy of Art and
Philosophy of Religion. In both cases, Art and Religion, our philosophical
investigation begins with a denigration and subordination of Art and Religion.
Matt said:
Since Nietzsche was working in a post-Hegelian intellectual world, I think it
would be interesting to compare the cultural stories Hegel, Nietzsche, and
Pirsig tell in trying to explain how we got to where we are. Because all three
think that story-telling is an important piece of our intellectual armament as
far as figuring out how to move forward. And all three were reacting to
directly to Kant. But there are significant differences between them, and it
would help clarify Pirsig's position in cultural history to see how it was
different than his predecessors.
dmb says:
Hegel? I don't get that. Pirsig explicitly denies Hegel in both of his books
and James battled against the Absolute for most of his life. Isn't Hegel the
ultimate Rationalist while James and Pirsig are radically empirical? I can
hardly think of anyone less comparable.
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