[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

Mon Jan 16 18:55:35 PST 2006

Matt K et al,

Good post, and yes, I also thought that remark about rhetoric to be weird. I 
want to also raise a different issue re philosophology, and that is about 
Pirsig's dissing Plato with respect to the Sophists by saying that Plato 
tried to corral the Good by talking of the Idea of the Good. (A side note: 
in doing so, Pirsig seems to be trying to eat his cake and have it too, that 
is, he can talk about other philosophers to bolster his argument, but nobody 
else can to question them. Another inconsistency lies in his talking at one 
point about metaphysics being metaphorical, and then at the end saying the 
MOQ has rock-solid foundations). But the point I want to make here is that 
Pirsig's criticism of Plato is based on a modernist view of ideas, not on a 
Platonic understanding of them. For modernists (I'm thinking of the Lockean 
tradition), an idea is something produced in the human mind as a consequence 
of having a lot of sense impressions. Hence, an idea is a secondary reality, 
while the contents of the senses are primary. For Plato, of course, ideas 
are primary, and are primarily external to the human mind (the human only 
"knows" by participating in an independently existing idea, not by 
constructing it internally). Thus, when Plato speaks of the Idea of the 
Good, he is referring to what he takes to be the *real* Good (the permanent, 
eternal Good) as opposed to the transient goods of everyday life. The 
significance of this is that what Plato was up to is the same thing that 
mystics say to do: don't be attached to the impermanent.

Thus, Pirsig is making a philosophologiical mistake, in that he is judging 
Plato anachronistically, using a modernist's idea of idea rather than 
Plato's, and thus misses Plato's basically mystical message. Plotinus, after 
all, had no problem with calling himself a Platonist.

- Scott

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matt Kundert" <pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2006 5:03 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

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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