[MD] Creativity and Philosophology, 2 (from 2005)

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Steve,

Steve said:
Pirsig distinguished those studying the history of philosophy 
from those pursuing the answers to philosophical questions. 
You don't like to distinguish between two types of people, 
but do you see two different activities in philosophy and 
philosophology? One is inquiry into philosophical questions 
and another becoming conversant in the answers that other 
philosophers gave? I suppose you would say that one 
cannot be said to be pursuing philosophical questions if she 
is not in a conversation with other philosophers and 
therefore concerned with other philosopher's answers.

Matt:
You got it, except that it's not about _literally_ being in 
conversation with other philosophers, even metaphorically 
on the written page.  You might say this is a transcendental 
consideration about the possibility of philosophy.  The 
question I would ask is, "How would we know what counts 
as a 'philosophical' question, as opposed to other types of 
questions, if they weren't the kinds of questions asked by 
_philosophers_?"  This is a paradoxical question for me to 
ask, because it supposes that we _need to demarcate 
philosophy from other disciplines_ before we can do it.  And 
isn't that what I've been railing against?  That philosophy is 
too amorphous to be defined?

What I don't think works in Pirsig's philosophy/philosophology 
distinction is not the idea that we can distinguish originality 
from not, or good philosophy from bad, but the idea that we 
can separate _questions_ from _people asking questions_.  
This means we have to demarcate classes of people, but 
this is not an invidious way of distinguishing (like "fake" 
from "real"), but simply a practical requirement.  You just 
need to distinguish what subject-material you'll be talking 
about, what questions you'll be addressing.  The whole 
first section of "Philosophoologlogyg" attempts to explore 
this situation, and it essentially says that if you try and cut 
the distinction the way Pirsig tries--which I think you've 
accurately repeated the spirit of, Steve--then you are 
basically saying that there are certain, natural questions 
about reality that will arise for anyone who just reflects on 
reality.  And these questions, mind you, are the same for 
everyone--whether they know it or not.  Since they are 
basic questions of reality, it seems to follow that one could 
_screw up_ the questions, get them wrong.  Reality 
demanding the correct questions to be asked doesn't sound 
right to me--I don't think Quality demands anything of us 
_generally_, except that we _value_.  Reality/Quality--as a 
whole--doesn't say anything specific after that, like _what 
we should_ value, just that our primary relationship with 
reality is evaluative.

I say this in Part IB:
"I think Pirsig believes that there are certain kinds of 
problems, roughly those 
					grouped under the mantle of the 
“traditional problems of philosophy,” 
					that one will always 
encounter simply by virtue of existing, that the 
					horse will 
always be available for examination. It is by making the 
traditional 
					problems of philosophy studied in philosophy 
classes analogous to the spatiotemporal beliefs generated by 
babies that Pirsig creates a situation in which one can 
					sit 
atop a mountain and be certain of being able to generate 
beliefs that are 
					relevant to great philosophers like Kant and 
Descartes. This is how Pirsig can 
					distinguish between 
philosophy's history and philosophy's substance. 
					He can do 
this because he believes it possible to simply reflect on 
existence 
					and come up with, e.g., beliefs about how we 
could be free in a cause and effect world."

It's not that I care whether philosophers are _concerned_ 
with other philosophers and what they say--there are a lot 
of great philosophers that hated their contemporaries, and 
did--per impossible--try to say something by themselves 
and ignore what anyone else says.  Heidegger, in fact, is a 
good example of someone who _did_ think of himself as 
getting back to the primordial/originary questions of reality 
(though he thought the only way you could do that was to 
go _through_ history).  I don't care if someone wants to do 
philosophy in ignorance of others, be an ascetic, mystic, or 
so idiosyncratic that their prose reads like poetry.  I'm not 
here trying to tell people that they _aren't_ doing philosophy.  
I'm simply trying to defend the idea that philosophy is 
_so natural_ and primordial that it has no natural way of 
being done, no natural questions, no natural methods.  I 
want to defend the right of mystics and professionals, 
respectively, to do what they do, and call it philosophy, 
particularly when it is one telling the other that what it does 
isn't philosophy.  As I see it, they're just working different 
problems, asking different questions.

Steve said:
Either way, Pirsig's philosophologist is still an artist since it 
is all art. We have greater admiration for the one who 
produces something exciting and new which the historian of 
philosophy is unlikely to do.

Matt:
I don't think this is true, and it exactly punches up the 
problem.  If we are distinguishing two different _activities_, 
two different kinds of artwork, then the historian--by virtue 
of doing a different kind of artwork--has exactly the same 
level of ability to be creative as the philosopher.  What you 
just said would be like saying, "The sculptor is unlikely to 
produce an exciting poem."  Well, yeah, but he's a sculptor 
(and hell, he might be a good poet, too, though he makes 
his bread carving busts).  And, what's more, what if I don't 
like poetry, but statues?  Then I'll have greater admiration 
for the scuptor, even if he is a little derivative, than Wallace 
Stevens or Whitman.  Pirsig's philosophologist isn't a problem 
for me because of the little things the distinction does 
(good/bad, creative/stale, etc.), it's a problem because it 
tries to do them all at once, and therefore, in this case, 
jumbles his argument.

Steve said:
Or is "philosophologist" just a deragatory term for a 
philosopher who we don't think is giving us anything new? 
No, that's not how Pirsig used the term. I think he wanted 
to distinguish two activities.

Matt:
No, I do believe he does use "philosophologist" as both a 
derogatory epithet _and_ disciplinary demarcator.  That's 
where the conundrum comes from.

"Philosophology is to philosophy as musicology is to music, 
or as art history and art appreciation are to art, or as 
literary criticism is to creative writing.  It's a derivative, 
secondary field, a sometimes parasitic growth that likes to 
think it controls its host by analyzing and intellectualizing its 
host's behavior." (first paragraph, Ch. 26)

We have two activities, sure, but one of these is a parasite.  
That doesn't sound very nice.  I mean, I'm sure there have 
been some very cocksure art historians and literary critics, 
but if meanness and assuredness is what we're talking about, 
have you ever met a genius who was so into his own vision 
that everyone else was wrong?  Isn't that the very notion of 
a "visionary," which is essentially what Pirsig thinks of as 
philosophy.  So, how is the visionary not doing their own 
controling and intellectualizing when they slot everyone else 
in their own place, like say an amoeba as a biological pattern 
or academic philosophers as philosophologists?

Now, art history looks very different from art, so "analyzing 
and intellectualizing" visual art does look different than what 
visual art itself is.  Part of what my last rhetorical question 
tries to punch up is how it might be difficult to tell the 
difference between Pirsig's philosopher and Pirsig's 
philosophologist, given the behavioral criteria of "analyzing 
and intellectualizing."  The reason for that (and apropos to 
your last comment, "Is the musician/musicologist analogy 
helpful?") is because Pirsig is using an asymetrical analogy.  
The analogy is _needed_ for Pirsig to draw his rhetorical 
contrast, but I close Part IA in "Philosophogoogleyeye" with 
this sequence:
-----
The first difficulty we've arrived at is the tenuous analogy 
					
that Pirsig draws between philosophology and art history. 
After lambasting the 
					entire field of academic philosophy in 
two paragraphs, Pirsig draws a picture 
					that no one can help 
but laugh at:

"You can imagine the ridiculousness of an art historian taking 
his students to museums, 
										having them write a thesis on some 
historical or technical aspect of what they 
										see there, and 
after a few years of this giving them degrees that say they 
are 
										accomplished artists. … Yet, ridiculous as it sounds, this 
is exactly 
										what happens in the philosophology that calls itself 
philosophy." [Ch. 26]

It would be ridiculous for an art historian 
					to do that. But us 
delivering ridicule upon the head of the lame-brained 
academic 
					seems to hinge on his confusing a discursive 
subject for a non-discursive one. 
					The reason the art 
historian seems so silly is that writing a thesis on art 
					is 
clearly different than painting. So what about literature? 
Though 
					both creative writing and literary criticism are 
discursive, the line between 
					the two does seem to be 
relatively easy to draw. It's the difference between 
					Hamlet 
and Harold Bloom's Hamlet: Poem Unlimited, between 
					
Wordsworth's The Prelude and M. H. Abrams' Natural 
Supernatural. 
					Though the line can obviously get a little 
blurry given my present object of 
					inquiry, the line that is 
usually to be drawn is fairly clear. 

In philosophy, distinguishing between 
					the discipline's history 
and its substance becomes nigh impossible. Going 
					back to 
our two subsets of philosophology, philosophy history and 
philosophy 
					criticism, its difficult to separate where people 
are doing philosophy and where 
					they're criticizing other 
people's philosophy. The difference between 
					philosophy and 
literature is the difference between an assertive discipline 

					and a non-assertive one. If you assert X, you are implicitly 
denying Y and Z. 
					This immediately fits you into an historical 
narrative of people who have asserted 
					X, Y, and Z and has 
you criticizing people who have held Y and Z. Pirsig himself 
					
shows that Plato's position is defined in part by Socrates' 
criticism 
					of the Sophists. And we can keep going further 
back: the Sophists by opposition to the Cosmologists, 
					the 
Cosmologists by its opposition to Homer, and on and on, ad 
infinitum, as 
					far back as recorded history will take us, though 
we can surmise that it goes 
					back even further than that. 
Pirsig's rhetorical strategy seems to be 
					to ask us to ignore 
whatever the philosophical community has to say about him 
					
because they are just bitter about being unable to do real 
philosophy. Under 
					this guise, however, it would appear we 
could say any damn thing and call it 
					philosophy because who 
would tell us otherwise? After all, in a bout of rhetorical 
					
overkill, Pirsig says, “philosophers … are a null-class.” 
					Well, if 
the list of contemporary philosophers is so small, it would have 
been 
					nice if Pirsig could have provided us with a list so we 
could know who we can 
					trust, who, in fact, we can listen to 
when they review his book and philosophy.
-----

The last bit is a little mean-spirited, but I doubt any less so 
than calling professional philosophers parasites and fakers.

And mind you, I'll forgive Pirsig because it is the design of our 
flaws that gives us definition and engineers the paths of 
betterness.  But I won't abide it in those who should know 
better.  It is, to my mind, part of the better path out of Pirsig 
that we leave that piece behind.

Matt

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