From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Apr 11 2005 - 19:23:33 BST
David,
David said:
In fact, I like to imagine that you look like Tucker Carlson, who I see as a
completely adorable demon from hell.
Matt:
See, isn't it great that we still agree on politics?
Actually, I should respond directly to one point in your post about
philosophology and creativity.
David said before:
OK. The difference between writing about art history and actually creating
art is more stark and clear than is the difference between philosophy and
philosophology. But I don't Pirsig's point is destroyed by this. In fact, he
is pointing out that its very difficult to teach genuine creativity in the
fine arts as well as in philosophy. I mean, the secondary nature of art
history, literaty criticism and musicology does not just serve as an
analogy. These are problems in their own right. And while "doing" philosophy
is not a physical activity like moving paint brushes or strumming a guitar,
the point is that some activities are creative and some are not. The fact
that both philosophers and philosophologist, as well as novelists and
literary critics, might seem to be doing the very same thing in some sense,
namely sitting and thinking and writing, does not negate the fact that one
involves the production of original work and the other does not.
Matt:
I agree that it is difficult to teach creativity--in any field. You can't
teach creativity, really. You just do it or you don't. And I incorporated
this in my essay when I said that we should take Pirsig to mean that
philosophy is unprofessionalizable.
What I want to say is that philosophy is too wide a subject to say that
these people over here are doing philosophy and these people over here are
not. There are different traditions in philosophy, and one of them is the
conversation started by Plato. It's parochial to say that one tradition is
doing philosophy and the other isn't: which is what people blame much of the
Western tradition for saying against the Eastern. I don't think you can say
that, for instance, literary critics aren't original just because they don't
write novels. That's a mistake because literary critics aren't supposed to
be writing novels. They have their own dialogue going and originality is
determined internally to it. Now, you can say that you despise literary
criticism, but I think it would show you to be a "know-nothing" about these
other activities to say that "some activities are creative and some are
not." The first part of my essay obliquely goes towards the point of saying
that creativity is something that occurs internally to an activity, not
something that occurs in some activities and not in others.
And this is the problem with Pirsig's distinction: I think he's trying to
pin down what philosophy is when everything he is about says he shouldn't be
pinning it down. I talk about this more in that other post (that I'll break
into halves in a day or two if it doesn't come through), but I think Pirsig
conflates two things that should be kept separate: creativity and
nonhistorical philosophy. When you want to point to who you are talking
about, you emphasize that they are writing nonhistorically, without regard
to the historical conversation of philosophy, but when you want to point out
what they are doing _right_, you emphasize creativity, which basically means
denying creativity to anyone who pays attention to history. My overall
point is that I think creativity and any particular act of writing swing
free of each other. Each kind of writing that can be demarcated from other
kinds has its own internal dialectic that determines the standards of
creativity and originality.
Matt
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