[MD] The Futile Quest for Academic Approval

[Matt Kundert]

Fair enough, but I don't think an honest examining of the 
reasoning is easily done in an antiprofessionalist tone.  For 
instance, "ignoring" is an internal process to academia--you 
_have_ to ignore some people and take others seriously, or 
else you'll fall into the quandary that Pirsig accused 
professionals of posing: having to read everybody before 
saying your bit.  What Pirsig misses (and other people 
peeved about their heroes being ignored and then reaching 
for antiprofessionalist rhetoric) is that the process of 
"ignoring" _and_ "saving" (that being what you'd like to do 
to Royce and everyone here to Pirsig) is already internal to 
academic processes because those are just the regular 
processes of intellectual maturity.  The only way to reverse 
the process of ignoring by saving is by getting in the game, 
which the rhetoric of anti-professionalism implicitly abhors, 
even if what the person does belies it (e.g., pissed off 
academics often use anti-academic rhetoric before making 
very academic arguments).

In other words, antiprofessionalist rhetoric just sounds like 
whining, even if one agrees that Royce should be saved 
(e.g., his notion of the Beloved Community is very 
important to leftist thought, like MLK).  The rhetoric means 
nothing, does nothing to help your cause--only patient, 
professional-looking arguments about why he should play a 
bigger role than he does would do that.

Antiprofessionalist rhetoric is _only_ aimed at critiquing 
Academe--but it _only_ does it by criticizing the _form_ of 
it, rather than the content, and it is not the form you are 
worrying about, as you say below, but the content.  It is 
one thing to do historical and sociological analyses of the 
culture-form known as the "academic" (like Kuhn and 
Bourdieu).  It is quite another to try and motivate those 
analyses as criticisms.  And I just, myself, don't see a 
pernicious form of ignoring of Royce, or Santayana for that 
matter, in the Academy.  If they are worthy, they'll find 
their disciples.  Just look at Nietzsche--he didn't become 
part of the family until Heidegger brought him into the fold.  
Or Melville--totally ignored in his time.

Matt

> Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 09:23:17 -0800
> From: ridgecoyote at gmail.com
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] The Futile Quest for Academic Approval
> 
> On a more thoughtful and sober vein (it was late last night when I got in),
> my point Matt, was not in trying to critique the Academe, but rather I
> wanted to examine the reasoning behind the dismissal of certain philosophers
> in the past.  I believe all that Dr. Kegley said about Royce, pertains
> equally to Pirsig.
> 
> "Ignoring those who are outside of and counter one's views has, of course,
> condemned a number of creative and excellent philosophers to the margins of
> academic concern, including many philosophers in classical American
> philosophy."
 		 	   		  
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