[MD] Post-Intellectualism

[ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR]

[John said]
...Here's a big problem, I have.  Where's art?  Where does art fit in?  You can say "intellect" but when you make intellect the arbiter of all reality, it tends to decide for itself what is art and what is not and that is a very bad idea. I don't misunderstand Pirsig on this subject, you dolt.  I argue with him.  And if you don't think it's permissible to argue with authority, in philosophical discussion, then you are in the wrong field completely my friend.

[dmb says]
This is NOT Pirsig's view and in fact Pirsig makes quite an effort to dispute the view you are pinning on him. This is not a matter of disagreeing with Pirsig but a matter of misunderstanding Pirsig - and in a very big way too. 

[Arlo]
Yeah, this is a horribly confused thing to say for someone who claims to "I don't misunderstand Pirsig". 

"Where is art?" Besides in the title of his first book? In Chapter 8 (ZMM), Pirsig likens "the art of motorcycle maintenance" to "the art of rationality". Here even a casual reader should be able to discern the role of "art", something Pirsig makes explicit later on. "Art is high-quality endeavor. That is all that really needs to be said. Or, if something more high-sounding is demanded: Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man."

Granger captures the implication here by noticing, "Art is thus a part of our most elementary and indigenous mode of being in the world." (John Dewey, Robert Pirsig, and the Art of Living)

In LILA, Pirsig clarifies even further the nature of "art" within his MOQ. "In a subject-object metaphysics morals and art are worlds apart, morals being concerned with the subject quality and art with object quality. But in the Metaphysics of Quality that division doesn't exist. They're the same." To make his position ultimately clear, he states, "there's a fourth Dynamic morality which isn't a code. He supposed you could call it a "code of Art" or something like that..."

"Where is art?" Art is Quality revealed in the works of man.

And which works? Just painting, sculpting, dancing? No. ALL works. Art is high quality endeavor in philosophy. Art is high quality endeavor in motorcycle repair. Art is high quality endeavor in culinary practice. Art is high quality endeavor in composition. In assembling rotisseries. In sculpting images from clay. 

And the goal? As Granger explains it, "In learning to conduct more of everyday experience in an artful manner, we increase our ability to liberate and expand the potential meanings of things." 

Included on Ant's DVD is a 2010 interview with Pirsig, which Ant has titled "The MOQ and Art". Here, Pirsig clarifies (again) his position on art. "“I agree with Patrick Dourly that this corresponds to Gengrich’s(?) notion of "art as mastery".  He does not think of art as an object (I think that was his first sentence) and neither does Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or my ideas of the Metaphysics of Quality.  Art is endeavor."

I'm just going to encourage you to get this DVD, so I won't copy more than this one paragraph, which I think reflects precisely what Pirsig has already elaborated on in his earlier works. 

"Oh, art as placed in the levels of evolution.  Well, if you read the Metaphysics of Quality, you know there are four levels of evolution: the Inorganic, the Biological, the Social, and the Intellectual.  And art is a mixture of all of those with Dynamic Quality if it’s really art – not – I say mixture - I don’t say it’s completely Dynamic Quality.  Finger painting by a two year old is Dynamic.  But it’s a mixture of somebody who knows how to satisfy the art traditions of history but at the same time has a direction that he wants to go on his own to some extent, so he’s not a complete copy-cat and he’s not a complete wild-man – he’s in between.  And, the amount of Dynamic Quality should not be overcome by Intellectual Quality, by these static patterns.  At the same time, the static patterns or the intellect- the Dynamic Quality should not overcome your static patterns to a point where it’s meaningless to a person who writes."

Which itself is simply an elaboration of this statement in ZMM: "...the art of the work is just as dependent upon your own mind and spirit as it is upon the material of the machine."

[DMB]
And there are many pieces of evidence showing that art is not to be confused with the fine arts, as Arlo so patiently and fruitlessly tried to show you.

[Arlo]
My money is on this confusion persisting.