[MD] "RMP: Ignoramous or fraud?

[John Carl]

PS:  If there is some antipathy toward Pirsig on Auxier's part, you can
certainly see why in that passage I quoted from Lila!  It just about NAILs
the academic know-it-all attitude to the wall, which admittedly, Auxier
generates from his pores.  But I still like the guy a lot and appreciate
y'all's help in reconciling two men whom I appreciate.



On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 10:14 AM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>
>



-- 
"finite players
play within boundaries.
Infinite players
play *with* boundaries."