Hi Erin,
Erin: "But when you described things such as the centerless web I could see
there being a danger at kneeling at the alter of no center...."
I think this danger is circumvented by Rortyan nominalism, a nominalism
reflected by Pirsig when he describes the "analytic knife" in ZMM (Ch 7).
The world can be split up any number of ways and none of these ways
reflects anything real or essential. Each is ad hoc. The fact that
Western civilization, for instance, makes a splicing between the religious
and the secular doesn't reflect an essential difference, so much as it
reflects the habit of our vocabulary. Rorty's nominalism and historicism,
while remaining an ironist, are what circumvent praying at any altar.
I think your second interpretation is probably closer to where I'll be
heading (naturally, we won't know till we get there). A brief sketch of
what I see on the horizon: In an earlier phase, I concentrated on
sketching out the MoQ in axiomatic form. What got me going in circles was
the realization that the first split contained itself. If you split into
static and Dynamic, static pattern thinking is binary, analytical thinking,
while Dynamic thinking was holistic. Dynamic thinking made reality
monistic, while static thinking split the world up into a pluralism.
Dynamic thinking was Quality as Reality, static pattern thinking was the
MoQ, which of course is what I was writing out. It was the practical
working out of Pirsig's own insight that he shouldn't be doing what he was
doing: he should just leave Quality undefined. What happens? Well, you
need both. On Pirsigian terms, its a contingent fact that you need both
static patterns and Dynamic Quality.
What Rorty adds to the conversation is that this centering on Quality just
won't do. But its where it won't do that's important. Rorty makes his own
fundamental split of reality and its between private and public spheres of
praxis. The private sphere is for self-creation and self-actualization,
while the public sphere is for the social good. The MoQ makes for a good
private project, but it makes for a poor public one. Quality, by itself,
is fine as far as I can tell, but its systemitizing is not. When Pirsig
urges us and nudges us in the right direction based on Quality, this is the
same thing that Rorty tells us to do with "peicemeal nudges". We should
avoid overarching systems, both in politics and thought.
But, as you can probably tell, this is one area that needs some work.
Matt
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