[MD] philosophology

[david buchanan]

Marsha said dmb:


 It's interesting that you are ignoring the subject/topic, philosophology, where RMP states:


"Historically music comes before the intellectual analysis of music and therefore is not dependent on it. Musicology, art and literary criticism, and philosophology are described in Lila as parasitic fields that sometimes try to control their host." (RMP, 'LILA's Child', Annotation 54



dmb says:
Ignoring the topic  of philosophology? That's not true at all. Yesterday in this thread I said, "Comparing one thinker to another is not the problem. Original thinking is better than comparative analysis and that's what separates a philosopher from a philosophologist but that doesn't mean that philosophology is evil or whatever. Pirsig compares and contrasts all kinds of thinkers throughout both his books. He draws a contrast between his Quality and Hegel's Absolute and Plato's Good, for example, and says Plotinus and Eckhart are his favorite mystics. He was impressed with the number of fits and matches he found in James's work. He compares his Quality with the Tao and his philosophy agrees with the perennial philosophy, Zen Buddhism, philosophical mysticism, pragmatism, radical empiricism. I don't suppose anyone could be foolish enough to believe we should avoid  such comparisons (except Marsha, apparently) or foolish enough to believe that such comparisons are not illuminating and/or clarifying (except Marsha, apparently). Besides, if one wanted to present an original philosophical work, why would anyone want to present it in an internet discussion group? A forum like this has its own kind of dynamism anyway; it's a place where you have to respond to whatever comes up and otherwise think on your feet. It's almost like a living conversation and that should be enough to keep things from getting too static. The problem with philosophology, as you can see from Pirsig's comments, is the dismissive, undermining, subordination of the MOQ by those who "classify it so that they don't have to see it as anything new." That's what he said in Liverpool too, where he objected to the philosophologist who would dismiss the MOQ for saying what's already been said and doing what's already been done. This kind of classification is not done for the purpose of illuminating or clarifying the MOQ but rather the opposite. It just puts the MOQ is a pigeon hole, slaps a label on it, puts it in a drawer and forgets about it. This is done, Pirsig says, "by people who are not seeking to understand what is written"."

But I guess you just ignored that, huh Marsha? Hypocrite.