[MD] Ironistic Metaphysics

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Steve,

Matt said:
I would just add that Steve's puzzlement on why metaphysics 
is impossible to avoid relies on a subtle disparity between 
what Steve would like to call metaphysics (following more in 
line with Rorty's usage) and what John would like to call 
metaphysics (following more in line with Pirsig's usage).

Steve said:
I think there is a difference in the way we are using to the 
term, and I could easily be wrong about how metaphysics 
has traditionally been thought of since I'm not expert on 
philosophy, but I tend to think that something different is 
going on with Pirsig other than metaphysics as usual. We 
have Pirsig actually saying that he has created a new 
metaphysics! Has anyone else ever made that claim? Pirsig 
has offered us polar coordinates (MOQ) with the suggestion 
that we may find it better than rectangular coordinates 
(SOM), while the idea of metaphysics had always, as far as I 
know, precluded the idea that there even can be more than 
one metaphysics. As far as I know, metaphysics is not taken 
to be the creation of ways of talking about reality/experience 
but the search for THE way of talking about it, i.e. trying to 
find the language in which the universe itself demands to be 
spoken about and to find the correct sentences that the 
universe demands be said about it.

Is not Pirsig then using the word "metaphysics" in an ironistic 
way in contrast with the search for such Truth? I'd like to 
read him as an ironist anyway.

Matt:
I'm actually a little startled, because I take the question 
Steve to be asking is interestingly new.  I'm used to dealing 
with the philosophy/metaphysics question via Rorty/Pirsig in 
a fairly typical, well-worn manner I've employed over the 
years (for instance, my responses to John), but Steve's 
asking a slightly different question, one about Pirsig's own 
use of "metaphysics" internal to his philosophical practice.

It's a bigger question than a simple rapprochement between 
two people using the word "metaphysics" differently, because 
for one, we do need to supply some answer to the historical 
question, which the other problem does not.  Because I think 
this is a bigger, and significant, question, I won't try for 
completeness in an answer, but maybe just offer a list of, 
shall we say, desiderata, areas I take it a good answer would 
address.

1) The historical question of metaphysics.
Not exactly a "history of the uses of the term 'metaphysics'" 
is called for here (though clearly it would run through it), 
since Aristotle's redactor(s) (the ones who put together his 
lecture notes into book form) are the ones who came up with 
the term, and we usually like to say those previous to them 
(like Aristotle himself, Plato, Parmenides, etc.) were doing this 
activity.

So what is needed is something like a "spirit-history," a 
specific defining of the activity you'll be concentrating on 
(no matter what the self-descriptions of each member in 
the list) so a tradition of alterations to this activity can be 
generated.  Every typical history of philosophy does this, 
though usually they don't tell you, so what I'm describing, 
though it may seem exotic, is actually what goes on all the 
time every time somebody tells you a story about philosophy.

The answer to this point seems to be necessitated by Pirsig's 
practice because it seems clear _from_ his practice that the 
writing of a spirit-history is an important part (a further point 
that might also explicated).  Further, to answer this point 
about _Pirsig_, we must explicate _his_ vision of the history 
of metaphysics in a way that hooks up with Steve's 
question--which is to say, Steve is pointing at a possible 
ambiguity (one which requires its own further explication, 
see below) in Pirsig's vision (something like what I've been 
doing, too, in various ways) that, Steve suggests, is 
_internal and intentional_.

This means we need a fuller fleshing out of Pirsig's vision to 
display the hidden part of it that creates the ambiguity, or, 
not so much an ambiguity, but an intentional tension that 
relates to how people should handle this activity called 
"metaphysics."  This is what Steve means about an ironistic 
stance towards metaphysics.  Pirsig's writes his metaphysics 
for us, and also talks _about_ what it is to be involved in 
that activity.  How do those two things relate.

2) What does it mean to create a new metaphysics?
The ways in which we are able to answer this question are 
actually constrained by the way in which we answered the 
first question.  Or rather, we should already have this 
question in view (because it is the one we need to answer 
for Steve's question) when we think up our spirit-history.  
And this is what really ties us to Pirsig's internal practice as 
a philosopher and the system of assertions known as "a 
person's philosophy" (in Pirsig's case, we might simply call 
this "the Metaphysics of Quality," but we might also pause 
before doing this and consider the potential issues this 
obscures which we might care about, e.g. the relationship 
between ZMM and Lila).

This creates an important tie, it shapes the kind of 
spirit-history we write, because Steve's speculative step 
forward in assessing the question he wants to ask included 
this: "We have Pirsig actually saying that he has created a 
new metaphysics!
Has anyone else ever made that claim? 
Pirsig has offered us polar
coordinates (MOQ) with the 
suggestion that we may find it better than
rectangular 
coordinates (SOM), while the idea of metaphysics had
always, 
as far as I know, precluded the idea that there even can be

more than one metaphysics."

First, I think the prima facie answer to whether anyone has 
ever claimed to have created a new metaphysics is that, 
yes, every metaphysician has always claimed that their's is 
new, and different, and without historical precedence (I'm 
exaggerating, of course).  But in Steve's final line, summing 
up what he takes to be the activity of metaphysics (which 
would help him write his spirit-history), he's defined as 
metaphysics, basically, the old Platonic quest for the 
underpinnings of reality--which, since there's ostensibly only 
one reality, there would be only one underpinning, and so 
because of the activity-enabling assumption that there's only 
one underpinning, the metaphor of choice is not only a "quest" 
(with a traditional assumption that there is a single thing 
being quested after) but also the metaphors of "discovery," 
uncovering something preexisting, something already there 
that you had nothing to do with.  (Note, Heidegger made great 
hay out of "aleitheia," what we translate out of the ancient 
Greek as "truth" transliterated means something like 
"unconcealed.")

So, Steve is using a very traditional and venerated 
understanding of what metaphysics is.  And yet, it does 
seem counter-intuitive, from this understanding, that almost 
every genius philosopher has claimed that they've 
"discovered" the single underpinning of reality (which is for 
some reason _different_ then what everybody else has found).  
Shouldn't everybody's conclusions be the same, if it really is 
something preexisting?  And yet metaphysical systems have 
only _proliferated_ over the years.  (Think of Pirsig and the 
hypotheses.)

This is why I think Steve's question is interesting and new.  
Because Pirsig at one point says of _Quality_ (which is 
notably not a metaphysical system) that this One should of 
course be like all the other One's (from Buddhism, Christianity, 
Platonism, etc.) because, just like Highlander, 
_there can be only One_.  There can _logically_ only be one 
One (another important thing to bear in mind).  So, Pirsig, in 
a certain kind of way, _does_ buy into a certain, similar, 
traditional view of _reality_ (there is only _one_ underpinning), 
though his notion of _metaphysics_ looks, then, different 
(because he _does_ seem to hand in the discovery metaphors 
when, as Steve presciently points out, he uses the 
relationship between polar and Cartesian analogized to the 
relationship between SOM and the MoQ).

3) What does it mean to be ironistic?
This question clearly has something to do with Rorty, but 
that's only because of the term Steve phrased his question 
in.  We can easily disengage it, because the idea has a long 
history, too--at least extending back to Hume, when he 
wrote in the Treatise on Human Nature that we should do a 
new kind of philosophy, which was basically a way of holding 
_lightly_ our intellectual speculations, and going on to 
Wittgenstein when he said in the Philosophical Investigations 
that the goal of philosophy is knowing when to put it down.  
Pirsig, Steve is hoping, would be part of this tradition in 
philosophy, in which we consider philosophy one part of life, 
not the whole thing (which would mean trying to understand 
the notion of a "single underpinning" in a new way).  So, in 
answering this question, we would need to first articulate a 
specific understanding of "metaphysics" of which to be "light" 
about (which we've done in (1) and (2)).  Then we'd need to 
be specific in articulating what this "lightness" just in fact is 
(conditioned as it is by our understanding of "metaphysics").  
And then we'd be able to articulate a counter running 
spirit-history of ironists to the dominate metaphysicians (I'd 
begin with the Sophists and then the Ancient Greek Skeptics).

So, those are my three desiderata, with further questions 
and hypotheses unpacked in the articulation of the 
problem-area.  As became clear, they are intertwined, though 
through experience I've seen people who agree on one area, 
but disagree in the next, because they see the _way_ each 
area intertwines differently (just one more place for 
disagreement to arise).

My personal startled interest in Steve's question is probably 
predictable and understandable--it is a well-known fact that 
Richard Rorty and Robert Pirsig are the two philosophers 
(writers, really) that have impressed themselves upon me 
most.  In fact, one way to understand everything I write, 
whether explicitly or not, is as a continuing, on-going 
dialectical struggle to put together the wisdoms of those two 
thinkers, of putting Rorty and Pirsig together.  Steve, because 
of his framing of this question, has helped me understand 
better my own pursuit a little better, which is exciting when 
you haven't had a good idea about it in a while.

But further than my or Steve's peculiar interest in both Rorty 
and Pirsig, I would want to argue that overall problem-area 
sitting behind the above is the question of the relationship 
between Pirsig's philosophical practice and the assertions he 
makes as a philosopher, between the specific activity of 
philosophy and the general living of life, between Pirsig's 
philosophy and Pirsig's life.  To answer any of those questions 
for _Pirsig_ (far more than any other philosopher), I would 
further argue, means specifically passing through the question 
of the relationship between his narratives and his philosophy, 
the form of his written philosophy (quasi-novels) and the 
content of his written philosophy (the MoQ).

I would then argue that these questions, about the 
relationship between Pirsig's practice and his theory, are 
_primary_ to any correct understanding of what Pirsig was up 
to, of what _Pirsig's philosophy is_.

This last claim is the really contentious one, but the one 
that I think makes sense of my arguments with most people 
about not only the big picture of what Pirsig's philosophy is, 
but also the best way to pay tribute to it.  For instance, I 
take it DMB would say that the problem-area of Pirsig's 
_mysticism_ is primary to any correct understanding of Pirsig.  
Our disagreements, perhaps, might be summed up by the 
over-arching understanding of what we take to be the most 
important element of what he was doing.  I think one will get 
warped answers when explicating what Pirsig's philosophy is 
if you don't go through the philosophy/life question first, 
whereas DMB, for instance, thinks the same if you don't go 
through mysticism, and, say, Bo if we don't go through the 
SOM/MoQ question first.

So the above desiderata are something _I_ think is important 
for understanding Pirsig, not just something I happen to fancy 
and find interesting.  But, hey, that's just one more claim to 
be argued for and disagreed about.

Matt

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