[MD] The Art of Philosophy

[david buchanan]

This is something like "part two".

In the first part, posted earlier today, I tried to show how Nietzsche and Pirsig both make a case that there is something terribly wrong with the Platonic legacy. I quoted from one of Nietzsche’s earliest works, The Birth of Tragedy, and from Pirsig's ZAMM. They both reject the Socratic idea that virtue is knowledge. They both reject the idea, as Nietzsche puts it, that the “virtuous hero must henceforth be a dialectician”. 

“Plato’s hatred of the rhetoricians was part of a much larger struggle in which the reality of the Good, represented by the Sophists, and the reality of the True, represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a huge struggle for the future mind of man. Truth won, the Good lost, and that is why today we have so little difficulty accepting the reality of truth and so much difficulty accepting the reality of Quality, even though there is no more agreement in one area than in the other.”

For both of them, as Nietzsche puts it, this is “the vortex and turning point of Western civilization.” But, and this is a very big BUT, their criticism of the dialecticians does not mean that we ought to abandon intellectual standards or that we ought to live by gut-feelings alone.


Please notice the types of artists that are being defended (by Nietzsche and Pirsig) against the Socratic demand for intelligibility; the sophists, rhetoricians, rhapsodes, etc.. This defense is mounted for the sake of word-artists in particular – and of course language is the philosopher’s medium too. Thus it becomes a contest between these artists and the dialecticians. The "art of rationality" is pitted against these "usurpers", against the dialecticians.

"A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself." 

"I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be tremendously improved, expanded and made far more effective through the formal recognition of Quality in its operation." 

To make a case that philosophy is a form of art is NOT to reject careful deliberation, is not reject the skilled handling of abstractions, or to dismiss the value of clarity and precision. They’re not saying that intelligibility is a bad or that it should play no role in philosophy. (It’s very hard to imagine how that would work in the world of philosophy or the motorcycle repair shop.) The idea is not to reject deliberate reflection but rather infuse it with heart and soul, so to speak. It’s a matter of reversing the priority, not of eliminating intelligibility but rather demoting its rank so that art is no longer subordinate to it. The Good is not subordinate to the True. Instead, truth is a species of the Good, one with a "formal recognition of Quality in its operation". We’re talking about a fusion or integration of the heart and head, the passions and the intellect.

" I think that it will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all. It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific practice."

"Reason was no longer to be 'value free.' Reason was to be subordinate, logically, to Quality." 

Like the artful motorcycle mechanic in Pirsig’s book, creative solutions only come to experienced mechanics with a feel for the work, to those who care about what they're doing, to those who also know how the bike works, what the tools are for. As with the art of philosophy, the artful mechanic understands the value of order and precision, etc.. The qualities that make language both accurate and compelling are certainly part of this art. Pirsig even extends this kind of artistry to the field of mathematics. He found that Poincare had thought along these lines and had asserted that of all the possible options the most interesting and beautiful mathematical solutions were pre-selected by an unconscious aspect he called “the subliminal self” and Pirsig recognized his own notions in this. 

“Poincaré then hypothesized that this selection is made by what he called the 'subliminal self,' an entity that corresponds exactly with what Phædrus called preintellectual awareness. The subliminal self, Poincaré said, looks at a large number of solutions to a problem, but only the interesting ones break into the domain of consciousness. Mathematical solutions are selected by the subliminal self on the basis of 'mathematical beauty,' of the harmony of numbers and forms, of geometric elegance. 'This is a true esthetic feeling which all mathematicians know,' Poincaré said, 'but of which the profane are so ignorant as often to be tempted to smile.' But it is this harmony, this beauty, that is at the center of it all.”