DMB said:
I can see how Matt's comment would raise Dan's hackles.
Matt:
I can see how you might want to comment on that.
I wonder, though, whether you thought you were disagreeing with
me anywhere in your further comments after that. (I refer everyone
back to the original post, Nov. 5.) I wonder whether you think I
successfully dissolved raised hackles.
Matt said:
A beginning formulation of understanding Pirsig's relationship to the
classical empiricists is to say that he is a post-Kantian,
quasi-Hegelian empiricist (which is pretty close to just saying he's a
Deweyan pragmatist).
DMB said:
Dan has made it pretty darn clear that he doesn't do
philosophological jargon, so Matt's concluding sentences seem
intentionally obscure.
Matt:
Well, I don't know--should those of us, like yourself and I, who know
a little philosophology stop alluding to the philosophological context
when others don't care about it? I'm not sure why. I doubt Dan
skips those parts in ZMM and Lila just because he doesn't care for
them. (I'm, of course, imputing this to Dan based on Dave's view of
Dan, not my view of Dan.) And besides, as Dan knows since he
always addresses all of his posts to everyone, our posts are read by
more than just the person we are seemingly directly engaged with,
and so I'm not sure why writers should just limit themselves to one
audience member only at all times.
DMB said:
In any case, I'd really like to know who these aggressive critics are,
the one's who see solipsism in Pirsig's ghost stories.
Matt:
I'd really like to know, too. As I think I made clear, it was a
memory-impression. My guess is someone like Struan or Glenn, but
it may have come up in dialectical discourse, too, and so not actually
made by an aggressive critic at all. (An illustrative example of what
I mean by "dialectical discourse" is Pirsig's thinking through of the
S/O Dilemma in ZMM.)
DMB said:
If the ghost stories and the other analogies are understood rightly, I
think, their point would preclude solipsism.
Matt:
Right. Perhaps I'm more sensitive to wanting to be clear about just
when and where a philosophical passage can take a wrong turn, and
that way to understand Pirsig's position better.
DMB said:
I wonder about your use of Hegel, Matt. Isn't it oxymoronic to even
say "Hegelian empiricist"? Isn't that like saying "Humean idealist" or
"Rortarian Platonist"?
Matt:
I don't think it's oxymoronic. Like I said, I'm thinking particularly of
Dewey, who was deeply impressed by Hegel's historicism and
holism. Think of it this way: pre-Kantian empiricism is loaded down
with the Myth of the Given. Pragmatists are, in some fashion,
empiricists who are not so loaded. That means something purified
empiricism of that Myth. I think Hegel is someone who can do that
purification.
Was Hegel an empiricist? Well, only in a post-Kantian sense,
following out Kant's claim that the only one who can be an empirical
realist is a transcendental idealist. But I'm not really interested in
what pigeonhole Hegel really falls into, only with the philosophical
traditions he played an important role in initiating (historicism and
holism).
DMB said:
And again, who are the critics? Who sees the specter of solipsism?
Matt:
They might be fictions of my imagination. However, to understand
Pirsig's dialectical position in the philosophical landscape, I think one
very well should understand just how and where in Pirsig's
philosophy a wrong turn could have landed Pirsig in this or that
philosophological quandary. It's only by such understanding that one
can make variations of the claim, "Pirsig's philosophy is better than
other people's," because then you can show specifically how
("whereas Descartes would fall into solipsism because of X, we can
see Pirsig here making a claim that allows him to avoid it...").
Matt
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