[MD] Philosophy and Philosophology

[Matt Kundert]

Hi John,

Matt:
Sure, but do you know why "philosophologists" are so certain? Because they demarcate their subject-material very finely, cutting off a slice of life, rather than trying to gaze at the whole.

John said:
Well I thought it was because they were restricting knowledge to what other's said - to who said what and why.  They study what is said and known by others rather than investigate for themselves the knowable and how best to say it.

Matt:
It's true, but that's exactly the kind of bias towards what the professionals do that I've been trying to undermine for many years.  The way I see it, your first claim, "restricting knowledge to what other's said," is perfectly true, and a desirable reference to an inquiry called "intellectual history."  Your second claim, however, can be peeled off from the first, and allows reference to a different thing, called "philosophology."

My creation of the term "philophilosophers" is tailored made for people who think it's a good idea to have a term of degradation for what professional philosophers do qua their discipline.  It isn't at the opposite extreme of "philosophologists," so much as if you think "philosophology" is a negative term, then you're a philophilosopher.  And it has been my further claim that if you _don't_ think philosophology is a negative term, it is unclear why the term is in your repetoire in the first place.

There have been many attempts to assuage the negative connotations that Pirsig attached to his little coinage, his neologism which _was_ demonstrably created to degrade professional philosophical activity, one of the first lines taken being "philosophology is just intellectual history."  So, if we have "intellectual history" as a term, why do we need "philosophology"?

Your own version of the distinction, John, might seem to be softer than other versions, but the "rather than investigate for themselves" gives the game away.  The "horse of philosophy" is always open for investigation, as in Pirsig's metaphor, but the "philosophologists," professionals who find it easier to teach their students in the classroom what other philosophers have thought rather than "real philosophy," instead focus all their attention on the "cart" being pulled by the horse.  And then--and this is the crucial move--the philosophologists (those bastards) call the _cart_ "real philosophy," and (echoing Thoreau more than a 100 years before) there are no real philosophers left to call their bluff.

It's a nice expression of antiprofessionalism, a quick finger to all the teachers you hated when going through school, but I've never been able to make much more out of it than an expression of resentment over one's _own educative experience_, which one then makes the mistake of universalizing into a this-is-the-way-things-are.  It was cute in Thoreau, funny in Pirsig--and there _is_ a _very_ important point about the _un_professionalizable nature of philosophy contained it it--but to use it systematically, and internalize it into your structure of philosophical engagement (your "philosophy"), is--and this is my big claim-to become a Platonist, _which is exactly the opposite of Pirsig's intentions_.

The big claim is what that silly paper, "Philosophologology: an Inquiry into the Study of the Love of Wisdom," attempts to make.  I won't go into the circumlocutions again here (though if people want to talk about the issue again, I'm more than willing to dialogue about it again).  But directly in your formulation, John, is what I would call a Platonic notion: a cleared out space always open to inspection, an image I think is needed to get pertinent force out of "study [of] what is said and known by others _rather than investigate for themselves_ the knowable and how best to say it." (emphasis mine)

I often go off on little screeds about this particular issue--which is my own little pet concern--because I see a lot of the very different ways in which us amateur philosophers pursue our own pet concerns collecting in this very similar pattern, in which professional behavior is down-graded in an effort to clear space for one's own amateur activity (an effort I don't think is needed).  So, in its way, it is one of the few things amateur philosophers can be expected to have in common, and so to have also the possiblity of discussion in which everyone will have not only an opinion, but a horse in the race, i.e. a reason for thinking the discussion has consequences for what one is doing, and so a reason for having a _motivated discussion_ (and not just an idle one with few consequences to what one does or thinks).

I have been concerned with the way amateur philosophers compose themselves, at first unconsciously but now quite self-consciously, for a long time.  It seems to me something that every amateur (and professional, for that matter) would be wise to spend some time thinking about, for it partly entails reflection on what it is your goals and purposes are in doing something called "philosophy."  It requires you to define what it is you want out of what you are doing, and this might help you better do what it is you are doing (and especially talk to others about what you're doing, and what they're doing).

It has been my suspicion for a long time that what attracts people to first Pirsig, and then the MD, what the lowest common denominator is of people we find writing here, is a general disappointment with professional philosophy.  I don't want to say that the disappointment isn't justified--given it is created out of the specific experiences of each person--but I do want to say that more reflection on that disappointment might help each individual inquirer.

Matt

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