From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Jul 02 2003 - 16:28:48 BST
Paul said:
I know I started with the second [synthetic] position and ended up firmly in the first [real understanding position]. I now think that the first position should be a precursor to the second. Make a real effort to understand Pirsig first but modify the MOQ if it doesn't give you the intellectual harmony he intended.
Matt:
A short apology for my project:
It may surprise people, but I think Paul is right. I think you do have to understand someone before you can really synthesize them, or expand on them, or do things creatively with them. The part where people think I've gone wrong is that they think I don't understand what Pirsig's message is, or that I've never made the attempt. Well, I started out firmly in the first position. My early writings (posted in the Forum) were attempts to use Pirsig to relieve some of the philosophical problems that other philosophers had generated. I think I did understand Pirsig fairly well. It was from that understanding that I moved beyond it to my present position, which many find degenerate.
The disputed fact is my understanding of Pirsig. Many think I've got him all wrong, and if I just tried shedding my blinders I'd really see him how he should be seen. They think I'm seeing ghosts. Well, if all of my critiques really were ghosts, I don't think my reception would be quite so hostile. I would expect more, "Well, Matt, I think your critique is off because Pirsig already is fully pragmatized and historicized." After all, I would think that if you saw someone who was simply seeing mirages, but his heart was in the right place, you wouldn't try and bull rush him. But then again, perhaps its just the temperament of the respondents.
I don't think it is just temperament (though that's partially the case). I think its pretty obvious that people want to rebuff my critiques by saying that Pirsig already is in the pragmatist camp. But then I see the same people saying very unpragmatist things. They draw the wrong consequences. That's why I still add in my two cents. I think people are drawing the wrong consequences from their philosophical positions. One of the few exceptions, I think, is Platt who is unabashedly an ahistorical, foundationalist Pirsigean. I commend it insofar as he sees the consequences of pragmatism, shrieks in horror, and runs to one of the only other coherent sides. I think he's wrong to shriek, but I think others try unsuccessfully to carve a middle ground that just rehabilitates what I see as the problems of ahistoricism and foundationalism, all the while claiming to go around them, or solve them, or refute them, etc.
The real issue involved is our understandings of Pirsig. But I think it is a bit unfair and a bit rhetorically cheeky to say that none of us try to understand Pirsig. Those of us doing creative things with Pirsig already have tried to understand Pirsig. That's why we moved on to doing creative things with him. Others just don't agree with the original understanding, that's all.
As a way of backing up my claim to understanding Pirsig, Platt himself thought very highly of my early posts. On that count, at least Platt should agree that I understood Pirsig, but that I'm now simply a degenerate philosopher, rather than a philosopher who's misunderstood Pirsig.
Matt
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