I have to apologize immediately. I haven't written a post to this site in
almost a year and the first words out of my mouth are antagonistic, but it has
to be said:
Squonk's review of Jonathan Marder's essay is the most childish review I think
I have ever read. (Granted, I can't remember what I thought of McWatt's review
of Beasley's Understanding Quality, considering all the fire being tossed
around
after its posting, but....)
As I generally refuse to review a review, I'll keep it short and simple:
For many of the interpretative platitudes Jonathan offered, Squonk, rather than
framing a context in which Jonathan's interpretation seemed inadequate
(so-called "criticism"), offered one of his own interpretative platitudes.
Rather than engage the essay, it was simply rebuffed, making one wonder whether
the essay was even read:
Ex)
[Jonathan]
>
> In the first novel, the vehicle is a motorbike which takes the narrator and
> his son across America. In the second novel, a yacht carries the narrator and
> his female companion down America's Hudson river to the ocean. But both
> novels are primarily vehicles for Pirsig's analysis of the metaphysical
> foundations of our society.
[Squonk]
>
> ZMM is primarily concerned with establishing Quality as the source of
> Subjects and Objects thus placing Values beyond both.
> Lila is primarily concerned with Moral order of reality as derived from
> Quality.
> The analysis of society in ZMM becomes an enquiry into the source of value
> divisions.
> The analysis of society in Lila becomes an enquiry into the level of society
> in a moral order generated by Quality.
Squonk quibbled about points of rhetoric:
Ex)
[Jonathan]
>
> It seems to me that Pirsig sees himself as a rebel out to shake the very
> foundations of human thought.
[Squonk]
>
> This is irrelevant surely?
> Either a thinkers' ideas are Good or Not good?
And finally, Squonk quibbled about points of Jonathan's historical narrative:
[Jonathan]
>
> If we consider human reason as our ability to objectively analyse reality, it
> comes as a great shock to see that Pirsig mounts a concerted attack against
> objectivity itself. And yet his discussions on academic topics still seem to
> be reasonable. He discusses aspects of several academic disciplines including
> philosophy, anthropology, psychology, biology, chemistry, and quantum
> physics. It seems fairly obvious that philosophical arguments should feature
> in the first three disciplines, but many would state that philosophical
> argument has no place at all in the natural sciences.
[Squonk]
>
> On the contrary.
> Aristotle's Ethics examines the natural state of living organisms and their
> societies, including Man.
> Aristotle was a philosopher by the way.
Explanation of Example: There is no set historical narrative of how any
intellectual idea or movement has gotten to where it is now. There are
competing narratives. Jonathon's implied narrative excludes Aristotle from
consideration. Why? Probably because Jonathan was taking a contemporary
perspective where Aristotle's writings are philosophical (as Squonk shrewdly
pointed out) and do not count where they coincide with science because the
natural sciences have replaced them. In other words, Aristotle is a
philosopher and not a biologist or physicist or cosmologist. The implied
narrative that Squonk offered up as somehow succinctly refuting Jonathan would
make Aristotle continuous with the current efforts of science. Of course, then
Squonk quibbles with Jonathan's use of Aristotle as continuous with science,
thus making the whole critique look like an exercise in "quibbling just to
quibble."
Caveat: I certainly have no problem with offering up an alternative
narrative. In fact, that's optimally what one should do. However, Squonk
really didn't offer an alternative narrative. He just tossed out a piece of
one, which, rhetorically speaking, implies the narrative the piece is from is
somehow more valid than the original narrative. In other words, Squonk was
quibbling, rather than engagingly constructing an alternative narrative that
would somehow damage the validity of Jonathan's narrative.
To end, David L. Hall's summation of Rorty's three types of critics:
The 'third rate' critic attacks the original thinker on the basis of the
rhetorical consequences of his thought and defends the status quo against the
corrupting effects of the philosopher's rhetoric. 'Second rate' critics defend
the same received wisdom by semantic analyses of the thinker which highlight
ambiguities and vagueness in his terms and arguments. But 'first rate' critics
"delight in the originality of those they criticise...; they attack an optimal
version of the philosopher's position--one in which the holes in the argument
have been plugged or politely ignored." [from Richard Rorty: Prophet and
Poet of
the New Pragmatism by David L. Hall, imbedded quote from an essay by Rorty
called "Posties".]
As far as I can tell, Squonk would mainly fall as a "third rate" critic.
If you can muddle through the difficulties of placing a critic of a critic of a
critic and figure out what kind of critic I am, then you've found the meaning
of the word "irony".
Matt
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