[MD] Transhumanism

[MarshaV]

Hi Matt,

Can you state the question in one sentence?  



Marsha    








On Jun 20, 2010, at 10:26 PM, Matt Kundert wrote:

> 
> 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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