[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[Matt Kundert]

David,

David said:
Don't you think a chat about substance was a very bad idea by JB?

Matt:
No, not really.  Baggini was beginning an elaboration of Pirsig's philosophy 
to establish some bridges between Pirsig and other philosophers, to help 
people understand what Pirsig is up to, where he falls on the philosophical 
map.  He was using substance in a fairly wide sense, as "fundamental 
constituent of the universe."  Now, on the one hand, pragmatists should 
eschew the question of "fundamental constituents."  But on the other hand I 
think one can answer the question suitably enough from the point of view of 
the person asking the bad question.  How many substances?  One, just as 
Pirsig said, "'Quality' or 'value' is the fundamental constituent of the 
universe."  As I said a little while ago, from a metaphysical standpoint 
(the standpoint that makes deep cuts in reality, like between mind/matter, 
subject/object, God/man, etc.) pragmatism will look like a monism because 
they deny deep cuts.  Reality is smooth, not riven with cuts and slashes or 
joints (though it isn't so much smooth as it is bumpy).

Pirsig didn't answer that way because he'd already gotten defensive and 
combative.  I think he was being needlessly paradoxical and unhelpful on 
this point.  Granted, I'm not sure Baggini phrased the question all that 
well, but I think Pirsig got hung up on a side issue.  For instance, the 
classification of monism, dualism, and pluralism isn't arbitrary.  It's to 
the point.  It's a tool to aid comprehension.  It didn't help that Pirsig, 
after advancing Quality as the basic substance, then promptly denied that 
there were substances.  Granted, Pirsig was right to deny the question of 
substance or "fundamental constituent of the universe" when he said there 
was no basic substance, that the Buddhist's call it no-thingness.  But 
Pirsig wasn't explicating what he thinks very well by suggesting that the 
MoQ is a monism, that the question of "Monism, dualism, or pluralism?" is a 
bad one, and that the MoQ is a monism, dualism, _and_ pluralism in 
successive breaths.  There are ways to use paradox to create bombast, the 
impression of an explosion.  But there are times when the appearance of 
paradox just breeds confusion.

I know a lot of people thought the appearance of Spinoza in the discussion 
was out of left field, and it kinda' was.  On the other hand, its uncanny 
for me.  I have a bunch of files on my computer of topics and ideas about 
Pirsig to look into.  One of the earliest was "Pirsig and Spinoza."  It's on 
there almost entirely because I was taking Modern Philosophy at the same 
time that I started researching Pirsig to write a paper on him in my 
Contemporary Philosophy class.  Now if I wrote down every damn fool 
connection I thought of I'd have several zip disks full of files.  But back 
then I didn't have that much to go on and the similarities between Spinoza 
and Pirsig struck me for pretty much the exact same reason that Baggini 
brought up Spinoza: instead of thinking that God is our eternal Other (thus 
breeding metaphysical divides that are hard to reconcile), Spinoza took 
Nature and Man and made them both facets of God.  The effects, of course, 
aren't exactly as Spinoza planned them.  Like idealism, once you make a 
monism, pragmatism starts to look better and better (my paper on Spinoza 
that semester was called "God: Now 100% All-Natural").

The thing that I think bogged down the conversation was both Baggini's 
understandable puzzlement over Pirsig's reticence to place himself in the 
philosophical tradition and Pirsig's then strange continued insistence on 
the revolutionary aspect of his thought.  This is the philosophology 
controversy and I think Pirsig is at least as complicit in it as Baggini.  
Obviously, I agree with Baggini that there is a problem with Pirsig's 
distinction between philosophy and philosophology.  But I also agree with 
Baggini that there are ways to use the distinction that do shed light on the 
area.

One of the things that I learned early on in engaging Pirsig's philosophy is 
that the status of Pirsig's originality swings free from the status of 
Pirsig's arguments and theses being any good.  One way to formulate the 
distinction between philosophy and philosophology is between the assertion 
of philosophical theses and intellectual history.  This means that the 
difference between doing philosophy and doing philosophology is the 
difference between able to tell whether a thesis, or position, or argument 
is any _good_ and being able to tell if its _original_.

This means that when Pirsig says that his philosophy is original or 
revolutionary _he_ is doing philosophology.  This also means that I think 
Pirsig himself is distracting attention away from where he thinks attention 
should be paid: the merit of his arguments, not their relations to others.  
When Pirsig claims that his philosophy is original or revolutionary he is 
making a claim that he has no intention of backing up.  From Pirsig's own 
point of view, to back up that claim would be besides the point, so he 
doesn't feel the need to bother with it.  But Pirsig baits the trail by his 
continued insistence on these claims and so distracts his interlocuters.  I 
surely doubt Pirsig does this on purpose, but by baiting the trail he opens 
up space to berate his interlocuter from missing his point by focusing on 
philosophology instead of philosophy.

If there's any truth in Erin's remark that she thinks I should have done the 
interview (and this would probably be the only small kernel of truth to it), 
its that I know better than to talk about intellectual history with Pirsig.  
I wouldn't have gotten bogged down in this.  Pressing him on points of 
originality _are_ besides the point.  Granted, I think there is a lot to be 
learned by seeing Pirsig in relation to the philosophical tradition, East or 
West, but any relationships brought up need to be about elucidating Pirsig's 
philosophy and arguments, what they are saying, not on how new what he's 
saying is.

Matt

p.s. Does Pirsig saying, "in philosophy rhetorical styles are supposed to be 
irrelevant to the truth" strike anybody else as incredibly weird for Pirsig 
to say?

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