From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Apr 16 2005 - 17:37:32 BST
Robin,
Robin said:
If we would now look at the current philosophers we can see that some
present their ideas as a universal truth, mostly based on history and by
quoting persons that bear authority in a certain field.
Matt:
Actually, I think you have it backwards again. The major turn away from
(human) authority was the Cartesian turn in the 17th century. To get away
from scholastic problems that the Christian philosophers were focused on,
Descartes focused his attention completely on the ability of ascertaining
episteme, or complete certainty. To do this, he created his famous method
of doubt. This was to have the effect of enshrining epistemology as the
first field of philosophy since we must now have some method of gaining
absolute certainty before making any metaphysical claims (or just claims).
Its precursor is Plato's dialectic. Descartes set the motif for modern
philosophy by (supposedly) draining away all history from his epistemology:
it was a method that relied nothing upon previous beliefs.
We can see this motif running all the way into the 21st century. The
universalists (who you would call philosophologists) want a dehistoricized
method to achieve some sort of certainty and the historicists don't think
such a method possible. Now, the _writing style_ of either party cuts
_across_ the historicist/universalist distinction. You can find people in
both camps for the most part. Jurgen Habermas would count as a
universalist, but he has one of the keenest eyes towards history. Donald
Davidson wrote very technical, history-depleted articles, but he busted some
of the most major universalist resurgencies in the philosophy of language.
This is why I don't think we can resurrect the philosopher/philosophologist
distinction around either a focus on writing style or originality. Those
things cut across our cross-section of philosophers. There's (almost) no
way a philosopher would make it very far if they didn't "believe that there
idea has a high value, but they are open to the ideas of others because
through conversation a new idea of possibly even higher value might be
formed." All good, honest philosophers want to find the best ideas. But
being conversable, again, cuts across our selection.
I think authority cuts across universalism and historicism, too. For the
universalists, the thing that confers authority is the universal truth (that
we have to somehow find). For historicists, the thing that confers
authority are good, honest conversationalists and inquirers, i.e. other
people. This is why historicists, like the Sophists, think conversation is
so important because the only way to gain authority is to gain assent from
your fellow humankind. The more convergence upon an idea (like "gravity"),
the more authority that idea with have. But that doesn't mean these ideas
aren't revisable. The authority isn't there by fiat, it is there by
argumentation, it is there for specific _reasons_. If you can give reasons
and arguments for conferring authority on a different idea (like a
"spacetime continuum"), then your idea will supercede the old one.
Universalists function the same way in practice, but they think the
authority being conferred is because the new idea is closer to the Universal
Truth.
Your main move, though, was to shift focus away from writing style and
originality to universal/static truth v. "dynamic truth." I don't think
this works either. For one, I do think it moves us further away from
Pirsig's position, insofar as the philosopher/philosophologist distinction
is concerned. I'm not sure there's much textual evidence to support your
claim via the philosophologist issue, though your interpretive device
(linking universal with static and historicist with dynamic) in general does
have initial plausibility and provocativeness. But still, I think the issue
of whether the philosopher's self-image has him looking for universal truth
or "dynamic truth" cuts across whether he writes with an eye towards history
and/or is creative and original. The problem is the practice of these
philosophers. In practice, even if a philosopher believes in a Universal
Truth that will be found by a Universal Method, he will follow his nose
along the path that will (God-willing) lead him there. The problem is that,
despite what some people will tell you, philosophy has changed a bit since
Socrates and Parmenides and almost all of the "important" philosophers
believed in a Truth to be found by a Method. And yet philosophy has still
morphed into what it is today. Philosophers followed their noses, which, I
would think, is as good a description of dynamic truth as you'd need.
Matt
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