From: Robin Brouwer (rsbrouwer@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Apr 15 2005 - 18:49:20 BST
Hi Matt,
To first quote you:
" The third is if it still has an historical connotation, then I want to
know why we should replace "intellectual historian" with "philosophologist."
"
We don't really need to change the word I guess, although I think that since
Pirsig was not a big fan of "intellectual historians" he might have chosen
to give them a new pet name.
If the discussion was about just the word we would not need to examine it
very deep i think.
However the distinction Pirsig makes between philosophers and
philosophologers and might be the same distinction many see between the
Sophists and Socrates.
The Sophist believed that truth could only be found wthin oneself and that
each person had his or her own truth. There was thus no use for listening to
others to find any truth, it was only usefull because it was interesting and
fun, but truth was still to be found wthin oneself and not within someone
else.
Socrates believed in a universal truth only known by gods in total, but
those truths sometimes showed their faces in discussion and within the
similarities of ideas and opinions of the many speakers.
For socrates reading books of other people was usefull since it might show
common ground for the reader and thus perhaps a piece of truth.
For sophists reading a book was only for fun or perhaps out of interest, but
not in any way to find out a universal truth since they did not believe in
one.
Both are registered in our current system as philosophers, but they surely
have a different way of going about things.
Its been a while since I read Pheadrus and Socrates's discussion, but in
that we might find why Pirsig chose to make the distinction.
Regards Robin.
>From: "Matt Kundert" <pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>Subject: RE: MD Creativity and Philosophology, 2
>Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 13:29:36 -0500
>
>Robin,
>
>Oh, Christ, sorry about that. I'm not sure if you left any gender
>indicators lying around your posts, but if you did, I'm sorry for not being
>more attentive. I have to remember to imagine you as Batman's sidekick,
>not my former high school Sunday School teacher.
>
>In your last response, you still want to use the distinction, but I'm not
>sure that we should. In fact, I'm positive we shouldn't. The first
>problem is that, given Pirsig, you are right: everyone will try and see
>themselves and all of their favorites as philosophers. And because of the
>studied ambiguity of the distinction, its hard to say their wrong. The
>second is if it still has originality connotations, then I want to know
>why. We already have an originality/unoriginality distinction and it seems
>to have very little to do with historical consciousness. The third is if
>it still has an historical connotation, then I want to know why we should
>replace "intellectual historian" with "philosophologist."
>
>The biggest problem is the first: no matter what you do to the distinction,
>it will always carry negative connotations. I think the biggest reason is
>that I see no way to make a principled distinction between
>historically-conscious philosophers and non-. You say, "if there was a way
>to have an infant understand what Pirsig ment in his distinction between
>philosophologer and philosopher, then the child would probably say that you
>don't need any books to be a philosopher." Part of my analysis, though, is
>that in helping the infant understand what Pirsig meant, you'd effectively
>educate it, which means the same thing as having read books. Its true, we
>don't need books to be a philosopher in the unprincipled sense that some
>people might be trying to gain wisdom by hanging together things like trees
>and sunsets and hot dogs. But if a philosopher is taken in the wide sense
>of hanging together whatever you want to gain wisdom, whatever your
>"subjective value perception" tells you you should, then why should we
>separate out one particular branch? Etymologically, it would mean the
>branch that studies the productions of the other branches. But that's what
>an intellectual historian does, so again, why the new term? And there's
>even worse turns in the dialectical conversation than that.
>
>It just doesn't make any sense if we accept the historicism that's latent
>in Pirsig's description of Quality.
>
>Matt
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfeeŽ
>Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
>
>
>
>MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
>Mail Archives:
>Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
>Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
>MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
>
>To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
>http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
>
_________________________________________________________________
MSN Webmessenger doet het altijd en overal http://webmessenger.msn.com/
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Apr 15 2005 - 18:52:54 BST