[MD] Plains Talk and Pragmatism

[Matt Kundert]

Hey John,

John said:
So what do you think, Matt?  Is the MoQ, absolutely anti-theistic?  I am 
at the point where I will take your word for it

Matt:
Heh, yeah--I'm reminded of what I tell my freshmen: even if a poet 
tells you what their poem is about, that doesn't mean what they say 
doesn't need to undergo the same level of interpretation.  That goes 
for what Pirsig says, or you taking my word.

I have no opinion on the matters you present about Gavin, David 
Buchanan, Dan or the Copleston annotations.  I don't even know 
which "Dan" you're referring to (Mr. Glover? that's the only Dan I 
know, and your recapitulation of events doesn't scan for the person 
I knew as Dan Glover), and I haven't read the annotations in some 
years, and haven't the time to give them a genuine consideration.

That being said, if Pirsig says "anti-theistic," I read "anti-clerical."  
The man who used the old trope that there's nothing that a priest 
hates more than a saint in the parish is not a man who has anything 
against mystics--Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Shinto--only against the 
fossilization that must necessarily grow out of their insights (that being 
static latching).  To say that the MoQ is antithetical to Christianity, sans 
context, is to just hide--from yourself and others--the polemical context 
of being an American expatriate looking at the devolution of your home 
at the hands of a small segment of America that identifies itself by a 
phrase formally reserved for a private act done between two consenting 
adults.  This polemical context is an important context that must be 
fought upon, but I don't think it helps--in an intellectually sophisticated 
conversation as we sometimes hope to be--to paint all Christians with 
one brush.  I'm pretty sure, if I ever had opportunity to present the 
issue to Pirsig that way, he would agree.  "Anti-theism" is a just a 
leftover from bad run-ins with the American Religious Right.

However--how else might anti-theism make sense in a 
Euro-American context?  First take this smart slide in your terms:

John said:
I believe leaving it as an ongoing and open question is the heart of 
what "mysticism" means.  Or in pragmatic terms, it's the heart of 
pluralism and appreciation for the varieties of religious experience 
that give rise to ongoing realization that lies at the heart of any 
metaphysics or philosophical behavior.

Matt:
Sliding from "mysticism" to "pluralism" is the right move.  Kenneth 
Burke said some startlingly similar and intelligent things about the 
relationship of mysticism to other Western philosophical traditions in 
A Grammar of Motives.  The insight is roughly: we call mystic that 
which we are unaware of the origins.  I just happened to read today 
a footnote in an essay Rorty wrote about Heidegger, who was 
claimed by many (in his later work) to hiding in an obscure 
mysticism rather than arguing it out with other philosophers.  In 
suggesting what "mystic insight" has in common with argumentative 
traditions of philosophy, he adds in a parenthetical "or just plain 
insight, for that matter."  That move, from "mystic insight" to "just 
plain insight," I think, is the proper "anti-theistic" move for pragmatic 
pluralists in the Euro-American context.  Because pragmatists are 
functualists, we look at what cultural manifestations _do_ for the 
cultures.  When the Greek poets referred to "the Muse" as the source 
of their poetry, we now know that we don't actually need to take the 
existence of the Muses with ontological seriousness because we can 
tell a story about the origins of their reference to the Muses: they 
didn't have any better ideas about where their fine phrases 
originated from.  But, on the other hand, neither do most poets 
today, so if they talk about Muses, it allows them to do something 
they wouldn't be able to do if they were constantly worried about 
where their ideas were coming from (i.e., write poetry).  So the 
poet believes in his Muse.  Do we need to?  It isn't clear we do, 
because we have different needs, and this kind of pluralistic ontology 
is pure James, from the Will to Believe to A Pluralistic Universe.

Where do our ideas come from?  At a certain point, if you press the 
question with the vindictive rigor of a Descartes, you'll have to throw 
up your hands and say, "I do not know."  Whether we call the origins 
past that point "talking to the Muses," "listeing to Being," or "direct 
experience" seems to me a matter of fancy and tradition.

Matt