Beautiful bountiful DMB,
The two of us have covered this terrain before and I haven't changed in my
stance regarding your standard ripostes.
1) I specifically challenge the analogy between the art/art criticism
distinction with the philosophy/philosophology distinction (for reasons
having to do with how it is obvious how visual art, being non-linguistic, is
different from art criticism, being linguistic, and how it is not as obvious
how philosophy and philosophology are, being as both are not only linguistic
(which novels are also), but also assertive). I tried to cover some of this
area and this objection in the first section of the paper.
2) I acknowledge to a certain extent that creativity is different from
analysis of creativity, however, as in 1), I'd like to challenge the idea
that Pirsigians seem to have in how creativity manifests itself in assertive
activities. The idea is that to be new and creative in an assertive
discipline means to implicitly (if not explicitly) deny or leave aside
other, previous assertions. This also means that analysis can itself be a
creative act (and simply productive, as you phrased it to SA). I end the
first section with this point.
3) I never denied that Pirsig doesn't engage the philosophical tradition, in
fact I make it a primary duty to point out that he does and _that it's an
important part of what he does_. I think you might be a tad wrong in saying
academics "can't really get away with this level of hostility toward these
figures," but I know what you're saying. Most professionals are, well,
professional--that being a word that has developed the connotations of
civility or politeness and whatnot. I don't think whether a philosopher is
outwardly hostile to others is a mark of creativity or not, but I'll give
you this: the bigger the break with the tradition you feel you have to make,
the greater what we might call "philosophical hostility" you will show,
hostility or rejection of the past. You might be polite about rejecting
Plato on through Kant and Husserl, etc., but it would be a kind of
hostility. Emersonian, in fact.
4) I think you bring up a good point when you say that Pirsig digs James
because of his non-academic attitude and that this links to a professional
having to "immerse herself in the so-called philosophical questions."
However, I don't deny this and do talk about problems-of-philosophy
philosophy in the paper, though more about deprofessionalized philosophy is
in the paper's sequel, "Pirsig Institutionalized." Rorty is often said to
be antiprofessional, and has explicitly said that he would like to see
philosophy departments deprofessionalized, for the exact reason that he
prefers James' image of intellectual-at-large (hence, Rorty's move to a
non-departmental position at UVa--_not_ because he was "giving up
philosophy," as you assert, but because he wanted to get the hell away from
"academic," "professional" talk about "the problems of philosophy"
philosophy). Rorty roughly thinks that Platonism/SOM is what makes
professionalization in philosophy possible, though the allure of
professionalization is more universal.
I think our difference on this point may be that you see a
theoretical/practical distinction lying in the background of all this (Ron's
desire for philosophers to "get their hands dirty"), whereas I see a
closed/open distinction lying back there. I follow pragmatists like James
in dissolving the theoretical/practical distinction, i.e. theory-talk is its
own kind of practice, which is Pirsig's point when he talks about
metaphysics, the "high country of the mind" not being worth it if there
ain't no payoff. Theory-talk may only have a very narrow payoff, but it may
have a payoff that isn't visible to people that don't read philosophy.
Philosophy written by Philosophy Ph.D's may indeed have a practical
payoff--just look at me. I can testify to it. But the payoff can be
oblique. I think the problem of professionalizing philosophy is making it
closed, by saying "this is philosophy, and that over there isn't," which is
what Pirsig looks like he's fudging pretty damn close to when he denies that
people who write about other philosophers are not doing philosophy.
Pirsig's better instincts, however, are for it to be open, which is the
entire point of talking about DQ.
5) This, of course, leads directly to your disbelief over the issues Rorty
talks about. Why would anyone take these seriously?!? I don't know, David,
why don't we ask the millions who do and have? If Pirsig's attitude to SOM
was as cavalier as you make it sound, then we wouldn't be hearing about how
we need to shake ourselves out of constantly. You make it sound like a "no
duh" process. Obviously it isn't that simple, given we've been sadled with
it since Plato in the West. Pirsig's strategy is, like Rorty's and
Wittgenstein's, therapeutic: help us see that there are no problems, move on
to better things.
What seems silly to me is to think that Rorty, who still functions as a
psychotherapist for professional philosophers, is still suffering from the
disease. There is a sense that his preoccupation does still mean he
suffers, but that doesn't count against him in the way you think it does
because the sense in which he does is the sense in which everyone, including
Pirsig, who argues or even simply urges us to dispense with X still most
conceptualize X in a certain way, and therefore still harbors that
conceptualization. But Rorty, like Pirsig, also moves on to the
reconceptualization jag, e.g. in an essay that (the highly lauded) Paul
Turner fancies a bit, "Inquiry as Recontextualization."
If you find some of Rorty, or any other philosopher arguing against things
that just seem patently outdated, boring, I would think your attitude would
be more like Jonathon Marder's, who once said long ago when I first started
talking about Rorty that he never found Rorty that interesting because he'd
already learned the things Rorty was doing from Thomas Kuhn. It was old hat
for Jonathon. Which is totally understandable. Rorty might still be wrong
about certain things, there's always that possibility, but I haven't found
your tack on investigating that possibility useful because most of
everything you say on this score is almost equally possible to throw onto
Pirsig.
If he's boring, he's boring. Not much of use to you. But wrong? I'm not
convinced that Rorty's more wrong than Pirsig. And effect on lives? As I
said before, Rorty has (somehow) had an effect on my life (I'm talking more
than my specifically philosophical pursuits, say, my orientation towards
Plato), so I would think that evidence enough that it can happen, even from
someone that seems so remote. You can still argue that, on a par, Rorty has
less to say to our regular lives than Pirsig (I'm not conceding this, mind
you), but I'm not sure you should try too hard to say that he's pointless to
all.
You said finally:
[Pirsig] is not just critical. He is not just clearing the way for something
new. He offers an alternative of his own design. It can be compared and
contrasted with the ideas we find in the history philosophy, but this is a
secondary activity insofar as we have to have the MOQ before it can be
compared to anything. And comparing things is not the same as creating them.
My riposte:
And yet my argument (for instance, when I talk about "stage-setting") is
that Pirsig would have had no alternative to provide had Plato not existed
and created SOM and that the alternative was designed, not free form, but in
contradistinction to Plato's SOMic wheelbarrow. (And, besides, Rorty is not
just critical.)
My basic argument (culled from Rorty and others) is that there is no such
thing as "free form creation" as you seem to envision it (culled from Pirsig
and others). Everything is created as an alternative to something--that's
what DQ is, the expression for the fact that there will always be the
possibility of a new and better alternative to what we have (static
patterns).
Attacking X _is_ different than supplying an alternative to X. But that's
not how Pirsig phrases the philosophy/philosophology distinction and Rorty
does not simply attack, he also supplies.
Matt
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