[MD] Percepts and Concepts

[Arlo Bensinger]

[John]
I guess I may have overestimated people. I thought that they would 
take what is said about art, scuplting rotisseries and 'what not' in 
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance into account anyway, 
because that is why we are here after all, and it was a pretty 
obvious part of the book.

[Arlo]
Wanted to get back to this briefly. Yes, John, of course my point was 
"preaching to the choir" for the most part. My point in emphasizing 
this was in response to the idea, proposed on this forum, that 
"philosophy" is "not art". There are many "lurkers" here, who may or 
may not read ZMM/LILA quite as thoroughly as you or the many others 
who contribute regularly and see this "obvious point" being a "well, 
duh!" moment.

I do believe, really, that one of the biggest challenges faced here 
is the re-defining (or historical correction in definition) of "art" 
and how we use this idea in normal, regular discourse with folks on 
or off this forum. This uphill struggle runs against the ingrained 
ideas of "art" as a reference to "objects" produced by very specific 
activity (painting, sculpting (statues, not rotisseries), composing, 
etc.). Even using such words as "an artist" is so common and habitual 
its hard to problematize for many people, like "artist" is a career 
alongside "mechanic" or "bus driver". I even had a student once say 
to me, "So much art today is bad, but every now and then you find 
some good art out there." (exact quote). "Good art"? From within the 
MOQ, isn't that redundant? And what the heck is "bad art"? But yet 
his statement is completely understandable in the modern way of 
understanding "art" as a label for particular objects derived from 
particular activity.

How would we reconceptualize his statement? Maybe, "So much activity 
today is non-art, but every now and then you find those whose 
activity is of such high quality that it is artistic." Even the idea 
of "producing art" is problematic, since "art" is the moment of 
relation between the object of activity and the activity itself. I 
almost prefer the term "work of art" because at least it emphasizes 
that the object in question is not the art, but is an outcome of 
"artful activity", although it does continue to privilege the 
"object" unfairly over the "activity".

Anyway, my points here are not to belabor this to contributors who 
would go "well, duh!", but to just bring the larger problem of 
diffusion the MOQ faces as it deals with the ingrained, habituated 
discourse of the larger culture, and to make sure that any "lurkers" 
are not derailed in the MOQ inquiries by the few contributors who 
continue to miss this "obvious, duh!" point.