[MD] Philosophy as Biography

[david buchanan]

Phaedrus to Lila: "I've just had feelings that maybe the ultimate truth about the world isn't history or sociology but biography."



Steve said:
A statement that I always found curious is RMP's one to Baggini about the originality of the MOQ. He said that his philosophy is unique because it starts with a practical question about quality in rhetoric or something like that. When I read that I remember thinking, Why is THAT important??? Why should we care about the story behind the ideas rather than just the ideas?


dmb says:
My hunch is that you and Matt have trouble getting a handle on Pirsig's perspective because Rortyism has you putting all the emphasis on language so that philosophy just is the history of philosophy, is just the ongoing conversation. In other words, philosophology is all that philosophy can ever be and the fundamental nature of reality cannot be outside of language because reality is language all the way down. And on this view, Quality is not an empirical reality. It's just a compliment we pay to sentences. 

Think about this way: The logical positivists epitomized the problem with SOM. The founders of the analytic tradition saw themselves as scientific and believed that they could separate facts and values. Values were a kind of pollution that interfered with the clear-eyed objectivity. They were considered mere expressions of emotion that have nothing with reality or the facts. Their stance against metaphysics was pure metaphysics, Phaedrus thought. Similarly, James thought the rationalist's rational stance was pure sentimentality. Instead of saying values are the illusion to be overcome, objectivity is the illusion and values go all the way down. Against the idea that values aren't anything more than comforting fictions, the MOQ says that intellectual truths are a species of value.

Now, compare the positivists stance that values are scientifically meaningless with the idea that "Quality" is a compliment was pay to sentences. Compare the positivist stance against the meaningfulness of values with Rorty suggestion that all we can do is cheer for our heros and say "Booo" to our enemies. Here again, just like the positivists, values are just an expression of emotion and there isn't such a thing as right and wrong. It's just a matter of taste. Rortyism is like positivism without the positive part. Instead of beginning with a practical problem like Pirsig did, Rorty's career was all about solving philosophical problem, all about reforming analytic philosophy. 

One says that caring and personal engagement are the crucial ingredient and the other is aloof and only holds positions ironically. One says that experience is the test of truth and the other says it's just about intersubjective agreement. One is a radical empiricist who says that we and the world are composed of nothing but values while the other has abandoned empiricism altogether. In other words, they just don't fit. Trying to get at Pirisg by way of Rortyism is like trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. When you do that, "Quality" becomes nothing but a label of approval and philosophy is nothing but philosophology. Pragmatism becomes vulgar expediency (instead of an empirical theory of truth) and rhetoric becomes a set of persuasive techniques (instead of excellence is thought and speech). Pluralism becomes relativism and provisionality becomes cynicism and nihilism. Pirsig says the fundamental nature of reality is outside of language but, following Rorty, you and Matt can never get beyond language.


And, as a result, you misunderstand or misread every important point. The meaning of Pirsig's central term is simply evacuated by your post-analytic interpretations such that, for example, Matt never was able to see the nature of the concrete, practical problem posed in those classroom scenes. In every case that I can think of (the fresh seeing, the cutting edge at the front of the train, the landscape of awareness beyond the cultural glasses), Matt finds a way to read Pirsig's analogies and metaphors so that DQ is explained AWAY, usually by converting to static quality. Compliments and sentences, for example, are both static and yet this is how we're supposed to understand the meaning of "Quality"? Quality is outside of language AND words of approval about sentences? That is a conceptual train wreck. It makes no sense at all. 


Steve said:
Also, while looking for the interview, I found this on Matt's blog which relates to the "Hero's Journey" thread: http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/03/pirsig-baggini-and-first-rule-of.html



dmb says:

That's a pretty old blog entry but it is fairly typical of the bad interpretation I was just describing. Baggini's questions were almost entirely philosophological. He was quite irritated by Pirsig's claim that the MOQ was a monism, a dualism and a pluralism because that violates the philosophological categories and yet Baggini never asked the author of the Metaphysics of Quality about Quality, as if the content of his thought didn't matter so much as the categories into which it ought to be placed. And Matt sort of defends the idea that doing philosophy necessarily entails doing philosophology. This is just one more case of trying to pound square pegs. I'm amazed that this hammer has been pounding for so long and I'm pretty sure that it's never going to work. It hasn't worked so far, that's for sure.