Krimel said to dmb,
..But it seems you have missed some of the boarder issues at stake. You have
ignored areas of disagreement between the two and ...
dmb says:
To point out area's of agreement between them is not to claim that they have no
disagreements. And limiting my remarks to just a few issues isn't the same as
"ignoring" the broader issues, whatever they are. It just means I'm sticking to
the point.
If someone asked, could you say what the point was?
Krimel said to dmb:
Nietzsche and Pirisg are hardly alone in looking back to the Greeks as sources
of today's problematic.
dmb says:
Yea, I know. So what? I brought in two thinkers to contrast to Plato and
Socrates. How does that entail any claims of originality? Pirsig's dramatic
language, "only a madman centuries later"? C'mon dude. It's a novel. Let's keep
things in perspective. The point is simply that Bob and Fred are both defending
what was lost with the advent of rationality.
I fail to see the relevance of your paragraphs on Husserl, Galileo, and God.
Feel free to attempt a clarification.
Krimel said to dmb:
Neither of them [Plato and Galileo] set out to start a crisis in the future.
They sought to end the crisis in their present. Plato saw the sophists
appealing to the reptile brain. At the dawn of rationality he sought standards
to measurement belief.
dmb says:
Of course Plato didn't AIM to start a crisis and nobody said otherwise. In
fact, the point you offer as a correction is something Pirsig had already said
in ZAMM. Gain something, lose something. It's a minor theme.
That is the third piece of criticism and that is your third straw man. In each
case, you IMPLY that I made some claim and then dispute this fabrication.
Notice how every criticism is curiously detached from anything I actually DID
say? I'll answer for my actual claims, but not the phony ones you attribute to
me. That's only fair.
Krimel said to dmb:
..., your Pirisig appears as much the accidental Nietzschian as the accidental
pragmatist. At least he acknowledges some dim awareness of James, of Nietzsche
he shows no sign of familiarity. All I can say is I am glad you are digging
this hole for your Pirsig not mine.
dmb says:
This piece of criticism contains an assertion. The criticism is that I'm using
a few select quotes to make Pirsig look Nietzschian. As you put it in the
paragraphs I deleted, the quotes are just a cobbled "collage," "a
hodge-podge" that's"been slammed together." The implied claim as that Nietzsche
and Pirsig are connected by nothing more than my "blind use of other people's
words."
But actually, the affinity between Nietzsche and American pragmatism is widely
acknowledged among those who study such things. Richard Rorty made a joke of
this sympatico: As the Europeans see it, pragmatism is just what the Americans
could get out of Nietzsche. It's a joke about the condescending attitude of
Europeans toward Americans but it also suggests that pragmatism is an American
version of Nietzsche's views. There are huge differences, of course, but your
suggestion that these affinities are my "accidental" invention is an ignorant
thing to say. These connections are already well documented and the only
problem here is that you are you don't know what the scholars and you don't see
the similarity yourself either, apparently.
In this case, your criticism doesn't have a straw man problem. It has a
make-claims-on-matters-I-don't-know-about problem
You're just trying to pick a fight. But you never finish them. It's just more
evasion in the form of snark and growl. Like that ever worked.
Some honest, intelligent remarks would be far more impressive.
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