I think Sam raises some very good questions and begins a very good analysis.
The literary quality of Pirsig�s books make for the pulling out of philosophical theses difficult and dangerous work, and I think that�s intended. In what follows, I�m going to comment on Sam�s starter post and offer a few different readings of the books. I think all of them are consonant with Rick and Sam�s readings, and in the end they offer no real positive answer to Sam�s questions. I don�t say that because I don�t think there is no answer to them. In fact, I will keep offering answers as I go along, but the reason I don�t think this is a positive answer will hopefully be a little clearer by the end. First, I want to say that I think Sam�s questions are far more interesting than some of the questions asked by others about the systematic structure of the MoQ. Those questions can be important, or at least reach a level of some importance, but I question the desire to construct a systematic metaphysics out of Pirsig's writings. Pirsig's writings are the way they are precisely because Pirsig doesn't want to simply create a metaphysics. That would simply be at the intellectual level, when the point of _both_ books, as Sam points out, is to present all the facets together to show that all of them are needed. And all of them together are ar�te, wisdom, the pursuit of individual worth. In other words, I think Sam�s right when he tentatively suggests that ar�te should be identified with the entire forest of static patterns because an �individual,� a �person,� is just that forest. We don't _have_ the forest, we are the forest. I think this might also be just another way of saying that ar�te is Dynamic Quality (though the reasons for this I can�t explore right now). And pursuing philosophy, which we can broadly call the pursuit of wisdom and seeing how things hang together, fits naturally with the metaphor Sam�s brought out of Lila: seeing how our forest hangs together brings us wisdom, particularly as we try and change the forest (which is the DQ/SQ dynamic). So, pursuing simply a Metaphysics of Quality may be helpful, but it isn't the whole thing (as many would, and certainly should, acknowledge). The whole thing is seeing the whole thing together, the breaking it into parts may help us to see. This actually brings me to why I find it much more interesting to write about Pirsig not in a systematic kind of a way, but in a literary-reading kind of a way. I don't want to construct a metaphysical system as some do, I want to read the novels with all their rhetorical tools and tropes and metaphors and analogies and excavate their meaning and significance that way. And I think, it would seem, Pirsig would say that that would be the best way to do it, because otherwise you lose sight of the whole. I�d now like to offer a few very general readings of ZMM, in the hopes of supporting some of the things I�ve said so far. (I think these readings are entirely aligned with Rick�s reading.) I think the way to read the book is as a philosophical dialogue the same way as Plato's dialogues are read, but even more complicated (if that's possible). Despite the fact that we know Socrates is the hero, what we don't know, because of Socratic irony, is what Socrates means. Many have read irony to mean the simple contradiction of what is said. Alexander Nehamas, though (in his brilliant book, The Art of Living), argues that irony isn�t as easy as all that. Irony completely hides the direction of meaning, so you don�t know whether a basic, contradictory 180 is intended, or something completely other. (And it is hidden not only from the audience, but from the ironist themselves.) So the philosophy of Socrates is always obscured, behind a curtain, never available for direct scrutiny. You can only see it out of the corner of your eye because wherever Socrates is pointing is not the direction he necessarily wants you looking. I would argue that the same thing is going on in ZMM except we don't even know who the hero is until the end, and even then you are left wondering if we should think that. The book is soaked in allegory and irony and the author's point of view is only available out of the corner of your eye. It is written to be a philosophical journey, a journey that takes you through a set of hoops and stages but has no definite end point. It is designed to make you think, but not necessarily about any particular thing, let alone any particular way. So Pirsig is both all of the views, as Rick quotes Pirsig as saying, and _none of the views_ of ZMM. And I think this type of reading is going on in Lila, too, though the book isn't nearly so cleverly or fantastically crafted (much as Plato lost his craft as you move from the early to the later dialogues). So reading ZMM for doctrinal points, for philosophical theses, is frought with peril as you are never sure what Pirsig means. All you have is the Narrator's presentation, but by the middle of the book you are led to wonder who's in control of the show (having learned of Phaedrus' real identity), and by the end of the book, after Phaedrus' triumphant return, you are led to wonder at what point Phaedrus began to dominate the Narrator, and so the presentation of the book itself. What we are left with, I think, are a clear series of philosophical episodes that start by being dominated by the Narrator, but are gradually replaced by Phaedrus' concerns, so "Narrator sections" (like the section on gumption) come fewer and fewer, until you reach the end of the book which is an extended meditation on Phaedrus' experience in Chicago. And as I mentioned, the most complicated feature of this whole model is that we don't know who the hero is, Narrator or Phaedrus. The Narrator through the beginning half of the book makes Phaedrus look like the bad guy, but through our extended ponderings over Phaedrus' demise we are made to feel sympathetic for Phaedrus which leads us to view Phaedrus as the hero, which reflects in the book by Phaedrus' triumph. The way ZMM is written is to have us move in stages through our feelings for the Narrator and Phaedrus and with the action in the book unfolding as a reflection of _our_ feelings towards the preceding action. As our feelings for Phaedrus wax, so does his dominance in the story. This of course brings us to the perplexing and infinitely interesting conclusion that the real audience of the story is the Author himself, not knowing how the book is going to end until he gets there because he is taking the journey with us, witnessing the events again as we see them for the first time, but the journey he is on is a psychical one. He changes as the story unfolds, but that is the point for us also: we are supposed to change through the story. But because of the obfuscating mask of irony, the change intended is hidden even to us. I suggested once somewhere (in a post I think), that we should read ZMM as having three main characters, Narrator, Phaedrus, and the Author, and we should read them in the fashion of Plato's Allegory of the Charioteer (which is from Plato's Phaedrus and Pirsig touches on it briefly in ZMM): two separate horses, both at war with each other, pulling the chariot in two different directions (though not necessarily completely in opposite directions; think of the physical description of a chariot allegorically and then remember that (as Nehamas argues) irony does not mean that a statement means the opposite of what it says, but simply something different) and the charioteer is trying to find a mean course between the two. The Narrator and Phaedrus are warring over the Author's mind. Now, Pirsig says that the difference between the Narrator and Phaedrus is the difference between social and intellectual patterns. I think this a bad description. I think a better description (as I suggest in "Confessions") is between the Pragmatist Impulse and the Metaphysical Impulse. And after suitable revision of the nature that Sam�s begun in the "Eudaimonic MoQ," these should both be seen as two impulses in the _social_ level, namely because the intellectual level eventually collapses into it. What's left for a fourth level is the creation of the individual--something that I think a prominent Greek scholar argues occured in Greece, though not for the reasons Pirsig says. Pirsig thinks something important occured in Greece because philosophy started--so he calls the fourth level the "intellectual level." The scholar I'm thinking of (hell if I can remember his name) thinks something important occured in Greece because democracy started. I think this is why we should follow Sam in calling the fourth level eudaimonic. So, in answer to Sam�s broad question: I think Sam�s perfectly right when he suggests that the MoQ, as the end product of the �philosophically conflicted free-thinker trying to get his beliefs to hang together,� as Rick excellently called Pirsig, doesn�t accommodate the notion of ar�te very well. I think Sam is right in calling the social/intellectual distinction into question. The social/intellectual distinction seems to divorce truth from social opinion which I think is the exact point of Pirsig�s �discreteness� claim for the static levels. However, I also think Rick is right in calling Lila the �portrait� of this conflicted free-thinker. In the end, I think, a moment of deconstruction is called for. Sam points out an allegorical motif I had never really thought of in Lila, between the MoQ hierarchy and the major �characters� (which includes the boat and the river). I like it, but if I may press the allegory, I think it deconstructs itself on just the basis I pointed out above, just as Plato�s allegories deconstruct themselves (as people like Derrida have been pointing out for years). If we are to take the book as a portrait of a thinker, with the characters struggling internally in the book as the thinker struggles internally, then the creation of the Metaphysics of Quality is no less a part of that struggle. The MoQ, as a creation of Phaedrus�, is an intellectual pattern, which by its own lights is an independently manipulable construct. Part of that construct is the notion of independence, and it is just there that it deconstructs along Wittgensteinian lines about the very notion of language�s independence from social opinion. But that, in the end I think, is no big problem because of the literary quality of the book I mentioned at the outset. Literature was long thought of as being more opaque to meaning than things like philosophy and science. The deconstruction of this dualism between opaque subjects like literature and clear subjects like philosophy is, I would suggest, one aim of the books. This leaves us in the position we were always in: interpreting the text. I think the aim of the books, in offering a portrait of a thinker, puts the emphasis on our interpretation of the books, not the interpretation of the thinker itself (which is called �authorial intention�). When Pirsig emphasizes the living of life and the gaining of ar�te and wisdom, I think he�s forcing us to make of life, and his books, what we will. All the questions raised by the books will be our questions because our participation in the creation of the philosophy of the books is demanded. The answers will be our answers. I think the triumph of ZMM is that it was almost entirely effectual, rather than doctrinal. It has an effect on us, though the effect is entirely personal to each person. �And what is good, Phaedrus,/And what is not good�/Need we ask anyone these things?� I think the mistake of Lila is that it came off as too doctrinal, as creating a philosophical doctrine that we should toe the line of. The creation of these doctrines is not bad. Those of us who call ourselves �philosophers� all have them, these �philosophical theses.� My effort in reading Pirsig�s philosophy, however, has been to point out what I think are the mistakes of some of these theses that seem to come out of Pirsig�s writings, much more out of Lila than ZMM. As Rick says cheekily, I think we should �cheer on Phaedrus when he talks like a pragmatist and just stare at the ground innocently whistling when he starts cozying up to Socrates [the Platonic parvenu].� Seeing Pirsig as a whole thinker, he�s right when he says that philosophy is just one of those things we do. Having �philosophical theses� is just one of the things we do. I just happen to think some of the ones he seems to have are bad ones. The spirit of Pirsig, though, is to see the whole of life, not just philosophy. And in this, I think, we can all agree. Matt _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_focus/ MF Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from moq_focus follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/mf/subscribe.html
