This is something like "part two".
In the first part, posted earlier today, I tried to show how Nietzsche and
Pirsig both make a case that there is something terribly wrong with the
Platonic legacy. I quoted from one of Nietzsche’s earliest works, The Birth of
Tragedy, and from Pirsig's ZAMM. They both reject the Socratic idea that virtue
is knowledge. They both reject the idea, as Nietzsche puts it, that the
“virtuous hero must henceforth be a dialectician”.
“Plato’s hatred of the rhetoricians was part of a much larger struggle in which
the reality of the Good, represented by the Sophists, and the reality of the
True, represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a huge struggle for the
future mind of man. Truth won, the Good lost, and that is why today we have so
little difficulty accepting the reality of truth and so much difficulty
accepting the reality of Quality, even though there is no more agreement in one
area than in the other.”
For both of them, as Nietzsche puts it, this is “the vortex and turning point
of Western civilization.” But, and this is a very big BUT, their criticism of
the dialecticians does not mean that we ought to abandon intellectual standards
or that we ought to live by gut-feelings alone.
Please notice the types of artists that are being defended (by Nietzsche and
Pirsig) against the Socratic demand for intelligibility; the sophists,
rhetoricians, rhapsodes, etc.. This defense is mounted for the sake of
word-artists in particular – and of course language is the philosopher’s medium
too. Thus it becomes a contest between these artists and the dialecticians. The
"art of rationality" is pitted against these "usurpers", against the
dialecticians.
"A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a
study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the
art of rationality itself."
"I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be tremendously
improved, expanded and made far more effective through the formal recognition
of Quality in its operation."
To make a case that philosophy is a form of art is NOT to reject careful
deliberation, is not reject the skilled handling of abstractions, or to dismiss
the value of clarity and precision. They’re not saying that intelligibility is
a bad or that it should play no role in philosophy. (It’s very hard to imagine
how that would work in the world of philosophy or the motorcycle repair shop.)
The idea is not to reject deliberate reflection but rather infuse it with heart
and soul, so to speak. It’s a matter of reversing the priority, not of
eliminating intelligibility but rather demoting its rank so that art is no
longer subordinate to it. The Good is not subordinate to the True. Instead,
truth is a species of the Good, one with a "formal recognition of Quality in
its operation". We’re talking about a fusion or integration of the heart and
head, the passions and the intellect.
" I think that it will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of
Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all.
It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific
practice."
"Reason was no longer to be 'value free.' Reason was to be subordinate,
logically, to Quality."
Like the artful motorcycle mechanic in Pirsig’s book, creative solutions only
come to experienced mechanics with a feel for the work, to those who care about
what they're doing, to those who also know how the bike works, what the tools
are for. As with the art of philosophy, the artful mechanic understands the
value of order and precision, etc.. The qualities that make language both
accurate and compelling are certainly part of this art. Pirsig even extends
this kind of artistry to the field of mathematics. He found that Poincare had
thought along these lines and had asserted that of all the possible options the
most interesting and beautiful mathematical solutions were pre-selected by an
unconscious aspect he called “the subliminal self” and Pirsig recognized his
own notions in this.
“Poincaré then hypothesized that this selection is made by what he called the
'subliminal self,' an entity that corresponds exactly with what Phædrus called
preintellectual awareness. The subliminal self, Poincaré said, looks at a large
number of solutions to a problem, but only the interesting ones break into the
domain of consciousness. Mathematical solutions are selected by the subliminal
self on the basis of 'mathematical beauty,' of the harmony of numbers and
forms, of geometric elegance. 'This is a true esthetic feeling which all
mathematicians know,' Poincaré said, 'but of which the profane are so ignorant
as often to be tempted to smile.' But it is this harmony, this beauty, that is
at the center of it all.”
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