[MD] Transhumanism

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Mary,

Mary said:
Pirsig speaks often with personal humility, as when he said 
something on the DVD to the effect that he wanted his 
comments about art treated as a starting point and not an 
ending point of discussion.  A major part of his work deals 
with different aspects of humility: transcending the 
absolutist nature of an ego-fueled SOM perspective, or 
transcending self to see that we are but part of a larger 
whole, or seeing that all is Morality, or that truth has a 
small "t".  These are important themes.  To be humble is to 
be just a little closer to what he is talking about.  Taken in 
that spirit, it seems perfectly natural for all of us to speak 
with an "it's just my opinion" voice about most things.  It 
also lends an implicit air of respect for divergent views.  I 
like it.

Matt:
In my honest opinion, surveying the course of my time at 
the MD (10 years) and linking my personal experience here 
in conversation and in other avenues to a general 
understanding of the course 2500 years on philosophical 
conversation, I've come to think that the "implicit air of 
respect for divergent views" is _not_ best generated by 
the rhetorical affect under discussion.

I think you are absolutely right, Mary, to link that affect to 
a kind of "theoretical humility": I, too, take this to be the 
opposite tenor of the course of 2500 years.  I link "humility" 
to the ascetic mood that Nietzsche denounced in favor of 
the "self-assertive" mood created by Bacon, and theorized 
best by Nietzsche's hero, Emerson.

_Personal_ humility is a wonderful trait to have, and 
thankfully my two greatest heroes, Pirsig and Rorty, had it 
in spades as it turns out.  But it might have turned out 
otherwise, and while I might have admired them less as 
people, it doesn't stop me from admiring, for example, 
Socrates, Nietzsche, or Heidegger.  To use "humility" as a 
core term in one's philosophy Rorty's entirely against, and 
I have ambiguous feelings about how much Pirsig would be 
satisfied with it.  I also see nothing necessarily humble 
about the four philosophical theses you listed.

What is in the background of Arlo's dissatisfaction (and I 
haven't read his responses to others in this thread closely 
enough to know whether he's made this explicit himself, 
but my bet is this sentiment is lurking) is that Pirsig--by 
thinking his comments _would_ be treated by us as the 
end of conversation rather than the beginning--ends up 
treating us like children rather than as peers.  He actually 
(and accidentally, against his intentions) _withholds_ 
respect towards us.  And I think this has had a trickle 
down effect, turning into a kind of Lord of the Flies 
situation.  Why would we stop inquiring into the Good and 
Better just because our favorite spouter of wisdom 
opened his mouth?  Only if we treated him as a 
father-figure, or a guru, would something like that happen.  
Just as a child is someone that hasn't developed 
ego-boundaries, to think he would end conversation about 
philosophy implies that we don't know where we end and 
he begins, that we don't at least implicitly know the 
difference between what I differentiate as philosophy and 
biography.  As if we don't know the difference between 
"what do you think about X?" and "when you said 'Y,' 
what did you mean?"

An implicit air of respect is not generated by adding "IMHO" 
to a message.  "Hey, you are a dick (in my honest opinion)."  
That didn't work out at all, did it?  What creates an air of 
respect is one's entire manner of being in their writing.  It 
is conveyed at times with certain rhetorical flourishes, but 
it cannot be reduced and pin-pointed to this or that 
isolated sentence or phrase, just as the genius of a vision 
or the personality of a person cannot be so reduced to a 
series of individuated parts.  It is the parts all together that 
produce that odd, whole thing called a personality.  It's like 
asking, "why do you love me?"  Any list will be deficient, 
and the great poetic lists are intentionally synecdoches for 
a thing that will always evade skillful individuation.  That 
doesn't mean we should stop individuating, just as it 
doesn't mean that "IMO" can't convey something good.

An example of how a philosopher might comport themselves 
to have both personal humility and to treat others as peers 
who are not to be treated with kid gloves, there's Dick 
Rorty.  All accounts of him personally are that he was one 
of the most self-effacing people they'd ever met.  And in 
writing, when people in the mid-80s began describing him 
as a "strong poet" (his own highest term of approbation 
for the genius), he demurred and called himself a "weak 
thinker," a term that came from a group of Italian 
philosophers who practiced intellectual briocolage.  
Following John Locke, who thought of himself as a 
handmainden to Newton's scientific discoveries, Rorty liked 
to say he was an underlaborer, clearing away the brush 
from under the new part of the forest others had found.  
And when the Philosophy Department in Munster, Germany 
invited him to participate in an experiment--to be part of a 
symposium on his work, except rather than the usual 
invitations to other professional, established philosophers, 
the papers and discussants would be culled largely from 
the undergraduate population--he agreed, and the results 
are published in book form.  I have never heard of this 
kind of experiment--undergrad journals exist, but who 
wants to read them?--but there he is, writing patient 
replies that treated the essays as serious criticisms, no 
matter their level of quality in the large view.  E. D. Hirsch, 
who I just happened to mention to Arlo, taught at the 
University of Virginia for a number of years with Rorty.  He 
said they co-taught a handful of seminars over the years, 
and he figured out why students adored him.  As he put it, 
it was because he had a much higher tolerance for 
nonsense.  The way I see this personal style of 
comportment in the classroom as of a piece with Rorty's 
explicit philosophy (recall Pirsig's comments about 
Chairman Richard McKeon in ZMM) is that genius vision 
often sounds like nonsense initially.  And with students, 
you're supposed to be encouraging them to develop 
themselves.  So you treat their nonsense with respect, 
as a valid entry into the "conversation of humankind," as 
Rorty liked to call it, by leveling the best criticism of it 
you can think of in a way that encourages the 
nonsense-spouter to, not abandon the idea, but to grow 
the idea.

That's what Pirsig could have done.  I absolutely respect 
and understand his desire not to get involved in the MD.  
It would be weird for a number of reasons.  But treat us 
like adults, and don't pretend you're doing us favor.  If you 
read in the shadows, and something occurs to you that 
you could clear up (or you changed your mind), write a 
little something for the Essay Forum--we do, after all, 
have a whole section set up for that kind of thing (i.e. for 
him).  I think Pirsig's generally made a wise choice in not 
engaging with us on a daily level.  I respect his desire for 
privacy, and that desire itself makes sense with the tenor 
of his philosophy.  But that doesn't go along with thinking 
he's going to end the conversation.

And I say these things as someone who owes Pirsig a 
great debt of gratitude for his role in my process of 
self-creation, one I will never forget, and also as 
someone who owes Pirsig a debt of gratitude for a 
personal kindness he was able to afford me.  Pirsig is a 
wonderful human being, and was somehow able to get it 
on paper _and_ wrap it into a theory of the world.  But 
it is exactly because of those things that I treat his 
ideas with the proper dignity they deserve and spend 
time thinking about them and trying to get them to fit 
and work and criticizing them when I don't think they do.  
His are not just opinions, they are opinions I respect.  
And the more one treats another's opinions with respect 
and the dignity of being confronted by good, intelligent 
opposing opinions, the more one generates an implicit air 
of respect for divergent views.

IMHO,

Matt
 		 	   		  
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