[MD] George Steiner interview

[david]

David Morey said to dmb:
Thanks Dave that is great,  George's Grammars of Creation is ...an interesting work that could, given an open mind, help develop the MOQ beyond some of its self-imposed limitations as I see it. Of course,  George has also written about Heidegger as an alternative opponent of SOM so he is well aware of SOM problematics,  but like me he thinks that post-SOM thinking does not imply some sort of positivist prison of experience,  no matter how important it is to recognise what it is that we do and do not actually experience.


Andre replied:
Lie 'beyond' experience?  ...It would appear, as you phrase it, that the MoQ has 'self-imposed limitations' and that there must be something lying beyond it. Which limitations of the MoQ are you thinking of David? And what could be lying 'beyond' the MoQ?



dmb says:
I don't see what the problem is either. Morey never explains why there is this supposed need to "develop the MOQ beyond some of its self-imposed limitations".  And when he finally gets around to naming this "self imposed limitation," it turns out to be a "positivist prison of experience". 

Apparently, Morey has confused the MOQ's radical empiricism with positivism or traditional sensory empiricism. Google those terms along with moq and dmb and you'll see that I've already posted on this topic hundreds of times - an you'll see how they are not at all the same thing. 

"The MOQ not only PASSES the logical positivists' tests for meaningfulness, it passes them with the highest marks. The MOQ RESTATES the empirical basis of logical positivism with more precision, more inclusiveness, more explanatory power than it has previously had. It says that values are not outside of the experience that logical positivism limits itself to. They are the ESSENCE of the experience. Values are MORE empirical, in fact, than subjects or objects." (LILA, p66. Emphasis is Pirsig's in the original.)

"The MOQ would show how things become enormously more coherent -- FABULOUSLY more coherent - when you start wiht an assumption that Quality is the primary empirical reality of the world.... ...but showing that, of course, was a very big job. ..." (LILA, 67)