It's been a while since I've contributed anything to the discussion. I've
been pretty busy with school as the semester winds down. However, I do have
a few comments about the recent thread of posts.
First of all, I must say that I consider Struan to be the most important
single member of this group. We might all feel good about ourselves sitting
around talking about how great Pirsig is, but we really wouldn't be making
much progress. I actually am not myself a full-fledged believer in
Pirsigism, as I try to avoid trapping myself in any overarching
philosophical systems such as MOQ. Nevertheless, I consider many of
Pirsig's ideas to be right on target and I would have to say that ZMM is the
most influential book in my life.
Of course, as much as I like Pirsig, I consider it unlikely that he will
ever rise above the position of a more or less cult figure. His ideas are
really not as ground-breaking as we often make them out to be. As far as
his ideas present a value-centered philosophy of life, they are great. But
as a metaphysics, they really do not cut deep enough and pretend to be much
more than they are.
Ultimately, I think Pirsig's greatest contribution is not a "Metaphysics of
Quality", but an "Analysis of Value", and think he would have been better
off restricting his task to that. Theory of value is an often overlooked
division of philosophy, and I think Pirsig deals with it more successfully
than any philosopher I've seen. The split between classical and romantic
value is beautiful, and value defined as a balance between freedom and order
(the dynamic/static split) is hard to argue against. And, of course,
identifying the difference between value derived from inorganic patterns,
biology, society, and intellect is equally enlightening.
However, I consider taking the idea of Quality as more than a theory of
value to be somewhat intellectually dangerous.
- Matt
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