[MD] Taking Words Seriously

[david buchanan]

dmb said to Matt:
I take "amateur" to be a description of one's motives. The word  ...also refers to those who do something for the sheer love of it, for its own sake.

Matt replied:
...I've come to think that it doesn't do enough to help us amateurs conceive of our own projects. I think we can, and should, go further than that. ...Disciplinary standards have the upshot of giving one a defined sense of having discharged one's responsibilities to produce quality work.  Not having a discipline can leave one in a void and lost, for there is no one they need to please. This can produce good work, but it certainly isn't an assured relationship.   So what I'm thinking is that, aside from our love of doing whatever it is we are doing, is there a way of erecting a standard of excellence in amateur philosophy?  ..perhaps the most important question for amateur self-definition: even if you would never make anyone else follow your own standard, what is _your relationship to others_?  In a discipline, this has a clear answer. But in amateur philosophy, it might be something to continually meditate on.



dmb says:

Imagine if your comments were altered so that they were all about amateur artists instead of amateur philosophers. In that scenario you'd find yourself asking if amateur poets and painters should erect a standard of excellence for themselves. It seems like a very apt switch to me because Pirsig's efforts to dig up the bones of the Sophists and rescue their cause basically amounts to a transformation of philosophy from a discipline to an art form.

Think about it this way: Rhetoric is quite simply and vaguely defined as excellence in thought and speech. I think this notion has to be vague, has to include this lack of assurance, this lack of a need to please, this lack of external standards. The standards and rules are added post hoc, after the fact. The excellence comes first. So it's not that we need standards of excellence so much as excellence is itself the standard, the goal. Dharma is a good word for this sense of duty, one that's not imposed by external standards. It makes sense to repeat that line from the free will reformulation in this context too; to the extent that one follows DQ, one's behavior is free.

Of course nobody wants to paint by the numbers, not even those who have a job in academia or are otherwise being held to professional standards. In that sense, the best pros are also amateurs. I mean, one can meet the standards AND paint without the numbers. On the other hand, even though Quality is an undefined goal, it's pretty safe to say that a lack of discipline is unlikely to yield excellence. A lack of concern for your relationship to others is usually not the stuff of which excellence is made. If the amateur cannot communicate his vision to others, he might as well be blind. And who ever got good at anything without working at it? In that sense, the undisciplined thinker doesn't quite deserve to be called an amateur. Someone who's interested but uncommitted, who's satisfied to dabble and skim, is probably better described as a hack or a dilettante. 

Picasso knew all the rules of painting. He pretty much literally grew up in a museum. He broke the rules on purpose and thereby set new standards. Who understood Newton better than Einstein did? Not too many. it's hard to set new standards if you don't see their point and purpose and limits first. The amateur as Rhetorician will break the rules and work outside the standards in that sense, like the Zuni Brujo, whereas the hack will tend to resent the professional standards as some kind of personal put down, as the doorman who thinks you're not stylish enough for this happenin' night club.