[MD] Pirsig & Emerson.

[david]

dmb says:

 Reading Emerson can be a bit strange because, as Pirsig said, “there is always a whiff of ministerial unction in his rhetoric”. The trick that works for me is to avoid taking him too literally. I read him as if it were a poet or a myth-maker. He's not even trying to be systematic or logically rigorous. He's an artist of some kind so that his sermons aren't meant to transmit bits of knowledge so much as they paint a vision. The central message in that vision is pretty darn MOQish. He's asking us to see directly (like Pirsig's student did with that Opera House brick in Bozeman) and to always strive to overcome yourself, to transcend yourself, which I take as a call for constant growth and evolution. He's making a case for DQ over static quality, basically. James and Dewey and Nietzsche and Pirsig all agree with this vision, I think. 

There are free audio versions of Emerson's work at LibriVox and some of the volunteer readers are quite good at it. Emerson was part of the Chautauqua tradition and so a lot of his work was meant to be heard out loud anyway. That makes things easier for iPod addicts like myself. 

https://librivox.org/author/1159?primary_key=1159&search_category=author&search_page=1&search_form=get_results

Thanks for reading it and for the kind words.


Dan said to dmb:

> This is simply awesome writing! I read the Emerson piece that you
> posted on Facebook and I look forward to checking out your Thoreau
> comments. I recently downloaded a collection of Emerson's essays but
> found their waters of insight rather rough sailing. Maybe with your
> encouragement I will have another go at it.
> 
> Thanks for sharing,
> 
> Dan
> 
> On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 4:06 PM, david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2014/10/10/cavell-and-pirsig-on-emersons-revolution/
> >
> > http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2014/09/29/emersonian-america/
> >
> > I recently wrote a couple of blog posts that are mostly about Ralph Waldo Emerson and Pirsig. One of them includes some previously unpublished comments from Pirsig (about Emerson). I'm working on one that will have unpublished comments from Pirsig about Henry David Thoreau.