[MD] "RMP: Ignoramous or fraud?

[John Carl]

Adrie,


On Thu, Nov 3, 2016 at 10:49 AM, Adrie Kintziger <parser666 at gmail.com>
wrote:


But this aside, and adopting the term for metaforical purposes ,Pirsig
> is a beachcomber in the intellectual landscape ,beachcombing the giant,
> and the world in wich we live, to show wat was laid bare by the storm so to
> speak.
>


So you agree with Auxier that Pirsig derived his MoQ entirely from
Whitehead?  To tell you the truth, I don't mind at all, it's just a shock
to find out after all these years.

Here is our conversation (mine and Auxier's) up to date.

----------- my email to Auxier:

Randy,

On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 12:15 PM, Randall Auxier <personalist61 at gmail.com>
 wrote:

> Zero. Chicago wasn't analytical at that time, and McKeon despised
> analytical philosophy. That day and age at U Chicago was 100% process
> philosophy, both in the Phil. dept and in every committee, including the
> Divinity School. The list of process-professors is endless. Zero.
>
> RA
>


There are some pertinent biographical facts you're ignoring, Randy.  You're
thinking "he'd have to be crazy to be in Chicago and not have heard of
Whitehead"  What you're forgetting is that he was crazy, and got so crazy
he had to be locked up and given electroshock therapy where he had to
reconstruct his earlier work by looking at notes he'd kept.    His story
isn't  made up although his story isn't so much a biography as it is a
novel - it's a novel about a man trying to reconstruct himself, which is
hard to wrap your mind around (is this first person or third?)   Paranoid
schizophrenics can't be judged on the basis of what a normal person or
student would do.  Pirsig passed over American Theistic philosophers (or
inasmuch as he'd heard) like Whitehead and James.  His goal was blending
eastern philosophy with western, as the title of his best selling book
illustrates.   THAT was the direction at which the old zen archer aimed his
intellect.

But whatever he was aiming at,  he completely forgot in the aftermath of
electro-convulsive therapy.

I offer a few pertinent comments from Pirsig, to illustrate my point that
he wasn't much of a philosophy student.

Taken from  Robert Pirsig's commentary on Frederick Copleston's 'History of
Philosophy', in a personal note to Anthony McWatt, who has a Ph.D in the
MoQ, from Oxford (although ant isn't much of a philosophologist either - he
was an art major)

January 2000

*Dear Anthony McWatt,*

*You asked in one of your letters how the MOQ compares with late 19th
Century idealism. The answer that follows copies part of Frederick
Copleston’s summary of that group in Volume 8 of his “History of
Philosophy” and inserts comparisons the MOQ. As I’ve said before,
philosophology isn’t my field, and I assume that Copleston’s understanding
of the positions of the various idealists is correct. Certainly it’s better
than mine, and using it and trusting it filters out a lot of red herring.*

Ok, right there.  The only thing he knows about British Idealism is what he
reads by another man.  How could this happen? Furthermore, he expresses
absolute surprise at what Coppleston describes of Bradley,  but then, how
many philosophers read Bradley?  So understandable to an extent.  But in
Lila he discovers William James(!)  Like, for the first time?  Sort of.
LIke with his blinders taken off by his own intellectual evolution.  Which
makes it more interesting to me.

he explains his overall attitude in Lila, describing  a boat trip, via the
old Eerie Lackawanna canal system to the Hudson and New York City:

"One of the disadvantages of this boat life is you don't get to use public
libraries.
But he had found a bookstore with an old two-volume biography of William
James that should hold him for a while. Nothing like some good old
"philosophology" to put someone to sleep. He took the top volume out of the
canvas bag, climbed into the sleeping bag and looked at the book's cover
for a while.

-26-

He liked that word "philosophology." It was just right. It had a nice
dull, cumbersome, superfluous appearance that exactly fitted its subject
matter, and he'd been using it for some time now.

Philosophology is to philosophy as musicology is to music, or as art
history and art
appreciation are to art, or as literary criticism is to creative writing.
It's a derivative, secondary field, a sometimes parasitic growth that likes
to think it controls its host by analyzing and intellectualizing its host's
behavior.

Literature people are sometimes puzzled by the hatred many creative writers
have for them. Art historians can't understand the venom either. He
supposed the same was true with musicologists but he didn't know enough
about them. But philosophologists don't have this problem at all because
the philosophers who would normally condemn them are a null-class. They
don't exist. Philosophologists, calling themselves philosophers, are just
about all there are.

You can imagine the ridiculousness of an art historian taking his students
to museums, having them write a thesis on some historical or technical
aspect of what they see there, and after a few years of this giving them
degrees that say they are accomplished artists. They've never held a brush
or a mallet and chisel in their hands. All they know is art history.
Yet, ridiculous as it sounds, this is exactly what happens in the
philosophology that calls itself philosophy. Students aren't expected to
philosophize. Their instructors would hardly know what to say if they did.
They'd probably compare the student's writing to Mill or Kant or somebody
like that, find the student's work grossly inferior, and tell him to
abandon it.

As a student Phædrus had been warned that he would "come a cropper" if he
got too attached to any philosophical ideas of his own. Literature,
musicology, art history and philosophology thrive in academic institutions
because they are easy to teach. You just Xerox something some philosopher
has said and make the students discuss it, make them memorize it, and then
flunk them at the end of the quarter if they forget it.

Actual painting, music composition and creative writing are almost
impossible to teach and so they barely get in the academic door.  True
philosophy doesn't get in at all. Philosophologists often have an interest
in creating philosophy but, as philosophologists, they subordinate it, much
as a literary scholar might subordinate his own interest in creative
writing. Unless they are exceptional they don't consider the creation of
philosophy their real line of work.
As an author, Phædrus had been putting off the philosophology, partly
because he didn't like it, and partly to avoid putting a philosophological
cart before the philosophical horse. Philosophologists not only start by
putting the cart first; they usually forget the horse entirely. They say
first you should read what all the great philosophers of history have said
and then you should decide what you want to say.

The catch here is that by the time you've read what all the great
philosophers of history have said you'll be at least two hundred years old.
A second catch is that these great philosophers are very persuasive people
and if you read them innocently you may be carried away by what they say
and never see what they missed."

Lila - page 26


jc:

So Professor, are you still sure there is a ZERO chance that Pirsig didn't
understand or read Whitehead?  If he did, then he's perpetrating one of the
most elaborate frauds I've ever known.

I don't know if this subject greatly interests you, but it sure does me.

--------Auxier's reply:

Zero. You don't understand what actually happens in graduate seminars in
philosophy, such as McKeon's. I have spent a lifetime both doing this and
listening to it. You don't understand how students talk on their way into
and out of class, or what they discuss on the days between. The entire
heady scene of graduate school, which Pirsig describes quite nicely in Zen,
includes all kinds of things that won't show up in books and letters. I
assure you, he knew and heard about and probably read Whitehead while at
Chicago. If his memory was wiped out, that is hardly evidence against what
I'm saying. It helps my case. He relieved these ideas from the recesses of
a damaged cerebral cortex. Nothing unusual about that.

--------

So, he beachcombed Whitehead's ideas and presented them in novel form,
that's your claim Adrie?  I'm not trying to pin you down or "nail" you in
any way.  But it's just such a revelation to me.

thanks,

John C.