[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[Matt Kundert]

DMB,

DMB said:
I've only just begun to look into it, but it seems to me that Heidegger was 
an anti-humanist, a crypto-theologian and a NAZI while Pirsig is the quite 
the opposite.  And, as Richard Wolin writes....

Matt:
Heidegger was an antihumanist.  Heidegger was also a Nazi party member, 
though, from what I understand, I don't think he bought too much into the 
party line.  He got caught up in it and certainly used it to his 
professional advantage (like when all the Jewish philosophers had to leave). 
  I don't think he was a crypto-theologian, though.  And Richard Wolin's 
opinion is just one of many on Heidegger.  Wolin does express himself and 
his fears over Heideggerian philosophy well, but the other school of thought 
on Heidegger doesn't think Heidegger's stupid, cruel politics play much at 
all into his philosophy.

Matt said:
It sometimes looks as if they [Heidegger and Pirsig] create two different 
ontological categories, being and Being, static patterns and Dynamic 
Quality.  I'm not sure what that's supposed to suggest other than an 
appearance/reality type situation...

DMB said later:
As I understand it, you think the mysticism and/or the MOQ has to be altered 
in order to avoid making the appearance/reality dististinction.

Matt:
You keep cutting me off too early.  I don't think the MoQ has to be so much 
altered as I think people, including Pirsig, should stay away from certain 
formulations.  Likewise for mysticism.  Some forms of mysticism, like the 
ones that talk about maya a lot, I think need to handled with care so you 
don't get caught up in an appearance/reality philosophical situation.  I've 
been saying these kinds of things for a long time.  You keep reading me as 
saying, "There is an appearance/reality distinction in Pirsig that needs to 
be eradicated."  I'm often not saying that.  Rather, I'm saying, "Here we 
have Pirsig's text.  Reading it in this fashion, X, looks to me to produce 
problems.  Reading it in this fashion, Y, looks to me to not."  You said 
that Heidegger looks like a crypto-theologian.  Well, what if I told you 
that Heidegger would most assurredly say he is no type of theologian?  Would 
you believe Heidegger?  No, of course not, that's the entire point of adding 
the prefix "crypto".  Likewise for Pirsig.  Is Pirsig a crypto-Platonist?  
He says he isn't.  But I still, to this day, don't know.  I keep advancing 
my suspicions, but I've come to no conclusions for myself.  You think I've 
come to some concluded opinion about Pirsig.  But I haven't.  I have, 
however, come to some concluded opinions about what I want to stay away from 
as a philosopher.  And I think I know how.  But as a reader of Pirsig, 
rather than as a philosopher, I'm not sure what he is on that particular 
score.  Crypto or no?  I don't know.  And I think it would be wiser of you 
to keep that in mind.  It may help you read me.  After all, isn't it wise 
for a person to think these things through?  Isn't it natural to have doubts 
and want to keep trying things to either prove or assuage them, not knowing 
currently which one will triumph?

As I said right after, which you suppressed and ignored, "That being said, I 
can assume you'd
respond that Heidegger creates the being/Being, ontic/ontological 
distinctions to try and evade that situation (and Pirsig himself, too, for 
that matter).  And I can appreciate that point.  But part of what I would 
take that point to be is that beings, ontic reality, static patterns don't 
_react_ to Being, ontological reality, DQ.  Reaction is something internal 
to ontic reality, static patterns, to that kind of being/reality.  It is 
intimating that these two kinds of reality interact to each other is what I 
think creates a bad philosophical situation."

As I said, I take Pirsig to be enacting that evasive tactic with his 
distinction between DQ and static patterns.  But in taking that tact, I 
don't think we should be saying that we react to DQ in the same way we react 
to static patterns.  And when one formulates the distinction between DQ and 
static patterns as you did, "DQ and sq are categories of experience," I 
think that situation is created.  The common denominator of DQ and sq are 
that they are both _experience_.  But saying that makes us say that we react 
to both DQ and static patterns, that DQ is a causal agent that pushes us 
around.  If ontology is understood in its wide sense of "things that exist," 
then static patterns are obviously an ontological category.  Not in some bad 
sense of ontology, but in the sense of ontology in which everybody has one 
(as in coextensive with the wide sense of metaphysics that Pirsig uses).  
Static patterns exist.  By saying that DQ causes us to do things, pushes us 
around, that we experience it like we experience static patterns, you've put 
it on an ontological par with static patterns.  But I thought the point of 
saying that DQ is synonymous with No-thingness was that it isn't ontological 
in this sense.  It doesn't exist in this sense.  I take the notion of 
Nothingness, DQ, and Heidegger's Being to be the idea that existence, 
experience, isn't closed, it is open.

Matt

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