[MD] Taking Words Seriously

[david buchanan]

Matt said:

...And, additionally, the reason why Pirsig avoided extensive reflection on care, and particularly about love, might be a reaction-formation to the hippies. Even as Pirsig wrote, he sensed something a little off about the hippie movement, something to beware rhetorically of, and by the 90s it became obvious that if he wanted to bridge-build at the cultural level between conservatives and liberals, it would be with the word 'value' (which conservatives seem to have co-opted and think liberals had abdicated) and not 'love,' which conservatives still were reacting to in the hippie context.  To formulate philosophical propositions with 'love' at the center would move too close to the 'soup of sentiments' that he wanted to avoid."  Taking things into account explicitly, being self-conscious, seems to be central to philosophical articulation.

dmb says:
Right, questions about particular word usages have to take in considerations like the context in which he is writing and the purposes for which he is writing. Words like "love" are overloaded and highly charged in our world. The "free love" of the hippies refers to sexual freedom. And yet the religious right use "love" to mean anything but that. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Jesus loves you. I love New York. I heart the Huckabees too. Love is the answer. All you need is love. Can't buy me love. What world needs now is love, sweet love. It's the only thing there's just too little of. "I'm lovin' it!" is one of the latest slogans for McDonalds. Given this cultural context and Pirsig's purposes in writing, do we really need to wonder why he would choose not to rest very much on that word? I don't think so. Given the context and his purposes, it would be very bad taste to use "love".
Plato had a moral hierarchy based on different kinds of love, the love of pleasure, the love of honor and philosophy, as we all know, means love of wisdom. This maps onto the MOQ's biological, social and intellectual levels pretty neatly, although Pirsig talks about them in terms of levels of value or static quality instead of love. If Quality is what you like, liking is positive regard and love is unconditional positive regard, then it's not exactly wrong or crazy to think that Quality is what you love. But you can't talk like that and still be taken seriously. Again, it would be a bad artistic choice, bad taste, aesthetically bad. And for Pirsig, those are certainly among the factors that make up intellectual quality (along with clarity, elegance, agreement with experience, explanatory power, etc.).