[MD] Another parallel

[Matt Kundert]

I don't hate you Dave.  I just don't think you've ever really 
understood _me_ very well.  That's what I find frustrating.  
When I see you saying things quite contentedly that a year 
before you were hammering me for saying, I find that 
frustrating.  Saying I have an "analytic bent," for instance, 
doesn't seem very fair to actual analytic philosophers, whom 
I suspect I have very little in common with.  The reasons for 
you saying that I have an "analytic bent" would be reason 
enough to say I have a "Greek bent"--in both cases, I have 
a little familiarity with them: that's about it.  But you don't 
say the former because you only see the latter, I suspect 
not because I write about it more, but because you have 
an old image of me and "analytic" is more obviously foreign 
to Pirsig and more of a rhetorical noose around my neck.

I have been traveling a path, Dave, a path that has not 
crossed extensively with the traditions of mysticism, East 
or West.  It is a path that in the last few years has been 
predominately preoccupied with Greece and literature, 
particularly an American tradition of writing that extends 
from Emerson and Thoreau on out, a tradition I consider 
Pirsig an important contributor to.  A tradition--believe it or 
not and squeal if you wish--that in the end, I consider more 
important to Pirsig's lasting vision (and appeal), mysticism 
becoming, much as it is in Emerson and Thoreau, a 
particulate in service of a larger form.

_That's_ a major difference--your primary reference point is 
a philosophical system called the Metaphysics of Quality.  My 
major reference point is a philosopher named Robert Pirsig, 
who wrote two books, in one of which he embedded a loosely 
fleshed philosophical system.  The writings swing around the 
center of the MoQ for you, while the MoQ swings around the 
center of the writings for me.

Is that, perhaps, a less frustrating way of encapsulating our 
differences?  Does seeing it this way, perhaps, make my 
approach seem a little less illegitimate?

Perhaps not, but that's probably the strongest thing you'll 
hear me say against Pirsig's mysticism--it's important, but 
not as important as it would appear you think.

Matt

p.s. My suspicion about various items of Pirsig's philosophy, 
like the immediate/mediate distinction, stem usually less from 
Pirsig's writings, but more from what interpreters make them 
say.  When others have their hand up the back of the Pirsig 
puppet, he sometimes talks weird to my ears, though I 
typically don't have many problems running the puppet myself.


> Matt said to dmb:
> ... I would say both of us have valid interpretations and its just soundness (relevancy) that we disagree over, whereas you say my interpretations are invalid. That's why I often seem the more permissive of the two of us. ... I see lots of different,  distinguishable-but-possibly-relevant contexts for Pirsig (and anyone else).  You, I think, see only the one, biographical context as relevant.  Maybe that's the difference.  I don't know.  But, we will both agree I think, it is pretty tiring.
> 
> 
> dmb says:
> Tiring? From where I sit the problem is more like frustration. I feel you ignore or go around the very things I find most central and compelling. I want to go to the heart of the issue and you like the kind of circumlocutions that I find trivial and/or digressive. 
> Your concerns about "context" here, for example. I would have thought the context for understanding the MOQ is philosophy. I'm not even sure what it would mean to look at the MOQ in a biographical context, let alone exclusively. The life of the author of the books we're discussing certainly isn't irrelevant but that's not what I'm interested in nor does it guide my reading. I think that philosophy is just about the only reasonable context given the nature of the discussions here. (Although, as Ron recently pointed out, literature would be appropriate too and it's a little sad that we never do that here. It's about half of what's going on, not to mention the anthropological stuff, which is also pretty big.) Anyway, I think the difference between your take and mine can be explained in pretty simple terms. We're both looking at the MOQ within the context of philosophy but that's a very broad context and so naturally we are bringing different elements of philosophy to it. Not only would I tend to cite a Campbell, a Wilber or a Watts where you might cite a Sellars or a Rorty, we even would disagree on those we'd cite in common, like James or Dewey. 
> It's only roughly true, but basically you're a neo-pragmatist with an analytic bent and I'm a classical pragmatist with a mystical bent. And that difference mostly hinges our different understandings of radical empiricism. Most recently, I saw this, for example...
> Elsewhere, Matt said to John:
> ...The whole constellation surrounding the term "experience"--pure/impure, immediate/mediate, pre-intellectual/post---have given me headaches for some time. Some people see them quite clearly; they remain opaque, if not down right suspicious to me.
> 
> dmb continues:
> Terms that you're suspicious of - pure experience, pre-intellectual experience - are terms Pirsig identifies with Quality. Obviously, since Quality is the central term in the MOQ, this would mean that you're suspicious of the MOQ's central idea. Naturally, I think that's a pretty big deal. If I'm right about that, your suspicions, headaches and the opaqueness of these terms would almost certainly lead to some kind of misinterpretation. If these terms really are as central as I think they are, and you are more or less reading the MOQ without them, then questioning the validity of your interpretation is quite reasonable and calling it a "misinterpretation" is not at all harsh language, not an act of cruelty and I certainly don't disagree with the reading that leaves out these central terms just to bug you personally. I sincerely think it matters and that it matter a whole helluva lot.
> 
> So my contention is simply that when these terms become clear the apparent tensions in Pirsig's work (or a bunch of them, anyway) will evaporate and your headaches will be gone.
> 
> I would even go so far as to say that when these terms become clear to you, you'll hate me less. You might even thank me.

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