[MD] The Birth of Tragedy/CH1 and the MOQ

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Dave,

Matt said:
Since Nietzsche was working in a post-Hegelian intellectual world, I 
think it would be interesting to compare the cultural stories Hegel, 
Nietzsche, and Pirsig tell in trying to explain how we got to where 
we are.  Because all three think that story-telling is an important 
piece of our intellectual armament as far as figuring out how to move 
forward.  And all three were reacting to directly to Kant.  But there are 
significant differences between them, and it would help clarify Pirsig's 
position in cultural history to see how it was different than his 
predecessors.

Dave said:
Hegel? I don't get that. Pirsig explicitly denies Hegel in both of his 
books and James battled against the Absolute for most of his life. 
Isn't Hegel the ultimate Rationalist while James and Pirsig are 
radically empirical? I can hardly think of anyone less comparable.

Matt:
Yeah, but you haven't taken into account people getting Hegel wrong.  
Hegelian scholars like Klaus Hartmann, Robert Solomon, Terry 
Pinkard, Robert Pippin, and Robert Brandom are beginning to offer a 
much different picture of what Hegel meant than what Hegel's 
immediate predecessors took him to mean.  Pirsig rejected Hegel's 
"Absolute Spirit," by which I take it, like you, he rejected the Absolute 
bit.  (He says in ZMM that Hegel left out romantic experience, but I 
think that's wrong--when he says that Hegel's philosophy is entirely 
classic, I think we get a better sense of what Pirsig is reacting to, 
and I think it's Hegel's notion of the Absolute.)  But construing Hegel 
as "the ultimate Rationalist," as the British Hegelians did (which is 
what James was reacting to), is exactly what's falling out of favor.  
(Unless one starts construing "rationalist" as Brandom has.)

I wasn't talking about Hegel's notion of the Absolute, however, but 
about the cultural story he tells, particularly in the Phenomenology of 
Spirit.  The kind of world-historical story of cultural evolution that 
Nietzsche and Pirsig tell dovetail, not only with each other, but with 
the kind of story Hegel tells, though Hegel's description of the 
"beautiful soul," for example, might receive different treatment in the 
hands of Pirsig.

But, maybe it's not for you.  I wasn't suggesting that everyone we 
read we do so on the assumption that they're perfectly congenial.

Matt