[MD] Morality and Prudence

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Steve,

Steve said earlier:
What people usually mean by the word "morality" includes the 
capacity to empathize, but in the MOQ, morality goes all the way 
down. Rocks and trees and atoms are moral beings. Rather than 
empathy being "the basic foundation for morality," in the MOQ 
morality is the basic foundation for everything (which includes 
empathy). It seems that you've made an argument _against_ the 
MOQ as the best way to think about morality.

Nevertheless, empathy is what I want people to think of with regard 
to moral talk rather than divine command or Natural Law. If you 
think it has an important place in the MOQ (if there actually is no 
contradiction with the MOQ in what you said above), it seems to me 
this is an area that needs some work since it is not something that I 
recall Pirsig writing about and since it does not divide neatly into the 
MOQ levels to talk about moral progress as expansion of the capacity 
to empathize with wider and wider circles of concern. In the modern 
liberal conception, morality is about better taking into account the 
needs of more and more people. In the MOQ as I understand it, that 
is not what morality _is_ it is just one goal that certain people have 
that either does or does not contribute to evolution of static patterns 
toward dynamic quality.

Matt:
Picking up this thought about there being a "basic foundation for 
morality" and its compatibility with the MoQ, what's interesting is 
how the section on care at the beginning of ZMM intercedes: Pirsig 
says there that care is the flipside of Quality.  If one accepts for the 
moment a prima facie integration of that passage with the MoQ, 
then it suggests that perhaps "foundation" is the wrong way to 
formulate the relationship, but that Quality and care/empathy are 
essentially related in some fashion.  And if we take this to be the 
case, then like Pirsig's staging of capitalism as the economic 
expression of DQ-allowance within a static pattern, then the MoQ 
seems to house within itself the near-perfect representation of 
modern sentimental liberalism.  We don't need to fall down to a 
"soup of sentiments," but Pirsig's MoQ would then seem designed to 
exactly coincide with liberalism, rather than calling it "just one goal."  
The MoQ, in this regard (and I think this might be the right way to 
regard it), would be like T. H. Green's metaphysics, or Dewey's, 
(maybe Hegel's), and certainly Benedetto's metaphysical philosophy 
of history, History as the Story of Liberty.  These metaphysics were 
_designed_ to be compatible with the basic ideas of liberalism, 
because though their creators were professors of philosophy, they 
took liberalism to be the most important thing going on in their lives.

Put that last way, this might not be the case for Pirsig.  More was 
going on in the 60s as a reaction to stale liberal attitudes, and so 
Pirsig's relationship is not simple on this score.  But the core seems 
to be soundly in the direction.  

As has so often in the past been commented upon, DQ seems 
interchangeable at times with Quality.  This may cause a few 
metaphysical or epistemological conundrums.  However, say we take 
advantage of that.  And say we take Steve's rough definition of 
liberalism, which is the politico-moral philosophy of empathy, as 
"better taking into account the needs of more and more people."  
Perhaps, then, we might reformulate Pirsig's formula for his 
philosophy of history from 

"All life is a migration of static patterns of quality toward Dynamic 
Quality" 
to 
"All life is a migration toward a better taking into account of the 
needs of more and more static patterns."

I think that grafts pretty well.  And notice, like care being the flipside 
of Quality, the chiamus between the first and second formula.

Matt