From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Oct 17 2003 - 15:19:16 BST
Matt,
> Answering the Nazi
> --------------------------
>
> What I would like to bring out of Pirsig's texts is how Pirsig seems to
> want to usurp the rhetoric of the "hard" sciences as paradigms of
> argumentation, that Pirsig seems to want to make morals arguable.
> Whether, in the end, Pirsig does want to make the Nazi answerable, I
> think, is still left open.
Although Pirsig argues, like most philosophers, with a combination of
reason and empirical data, (call it the hard science paradigm if you
wish), I seriously doubt if he would argue with a Nazi.
> To do this, I would like to use the example of the Nazi as the paradigm
> case of a morally corrupted individual. For our purposes, the case of
> the Nazi is only interesting if he is a _convinced_ Nazi, as convinced
> of the morality of Nazism as we are convinced of its immorality, and a
> _sophisticated_ philosopher, as sophisticated in the art of
> argumentation and rhetoric as we are. What many individuals want is a
> knock-down, logical argument, the force of which would, if the Nazi were
> to remain a sane, logical interlocuter, demand that the Nazi recant his
> erroneous ways.
You are putting up a huge straw man in your "sophisticated Nazi." For
Pirsig, a Nazi becomes a biological creature when he uses physical
force to silence another human being. Since a Nazi by definition is
such a creature, Pirsig would invoke a moral sanction, based on his
moral hierarchy, as follows:
"Only social patterns can control biological patterns, and the
instrument of conversation between society and biology is not words.
The instrument of conversation between society and biology has always
been a policeman or a soldier and his gun." (Lila, Chp. 24)
Which is precisely the way we treated Nazis. And rightly so.
> Rorty's reply to such a request is that "there is no neutral, common
> ground to which an experienced Nazi philosopher and I can repair in
> order to argue out our differences. That Nazi and I will always strike
> one another as begging all the crucial questions, arguing in circles."
> (p. 15, PSH) Rorty says that we cannot answer the Nazi because we do
> not hold enough of the relevant premises in common to have an argument
> in which our arguments and his arguments are engageable, answerable in
> terms we both would recognize as good, sufficient, and relevant.
Pirsig would say there's no point in attempting to argue with a Nazi.
The only conversation we can have with a Nazi is at the point of a gun
because a Nazi is a throwback "to the might-makes-right morality of
prehistoric brigandage." (24)
> It has been pointed out on many occasions that Pirsig has this to say
> about morality and pragmatism: "James would probably have been horrified
> to find that Nazis could use his pragmatism just as freely as anyone
> else, but Phaedrus didn't see anything that would prevent it. But he
> thought that the Metaphysics of Quality's classification of static
> patterns of good prevents this kind of debasement." People have tried
> to say that this makes the MoQ impossible for the Nazi to use, that, in
> effect, you can answer the Nazi by using the MoQ.
I don't know what "people" you're referring to who say you can answer a
Nazi by using the MOQ, unless you mean answer with a bullet.
> The second problem is that I see no reason to think that a sophisticated
> Nazi philosopher could not co-opt the MoQ just as easily as an American
> rhetoric teacher. Just as a sophisticated rhetoric teacher can
> redescribe the history of philosophy in terms of Quality, so can a
> sophisticated Nazi redescribe a metaphysical system and tailor it to fit
> his needs. The problem with metaphysical systems, with philosophy in
> general, is that it is too _general_. When you have a systematic
> _moral_ hierarchy of Dynamic Quality, intellectual static patterns,
> social static patterns, biological static patterns, and inorganic static
> patterns, what's to stop the Nazi from describing Jews as no more than
> animals, the fascist state as being the most evolved government, Alfred
> Rosenberg's "blood, race, and soil" interpretation of the MoQ as the
> greatest philosophical achievement, and Adolf Hitler the great brujo of
> our generation? As far as I can see, as long as we stay at
> generalities, nothi ng.
If you are arguing that people can rationalize any act, no matter how
horrendous, you're obviously right. Likewise, if you're arguing that
someone can twist a metaphysics to suit his own agenda, you're right
again. But, if one accepts ALL the assumptions and ALL the evidence of
a given metaphysics (and the logic of the metaphysics is airtight),
then I don't see how it's possible to disagree with it other than just
being silly.
> What stops the Nazi is concretizing the MoQ, defining the terms of the
> MoQ so that democracy is the greatest government and freedom the
> greatest intellectual achievement. However, this creates the third
> problem of reading Pirsig as _answering_ the Nazi: if we insist on our
> definitions of the MoQ, we beg the question in our favor over the Nazi.
> In effect, we don't answer him, we merely exclude him from our
> conversation. In fact, when we look closely, it isn't clear that Pirsig
> is saying that the MoQ _answers_ the Nazi. He says that the MoQ
> "prevents this kind of debasement", meaning that the way the MoQ should
> be interpreted prevents the Nazi from arguing for his own morals, in
> other words, it excludes him from continuing the conversation in terms
> he would use. It stops him cold and causes him to reply, "Well, have it
> your way. I refuse to enter the arena."
Right. the MOQ excludes the Nazi for reasons cited above.
> To reformulate everything I've been saying so far, pragmatists are
> Humeans, they think reason the slave of the passions.
I always figured pragmatists to be anti-science, that for them all ways
of knowing (myth, astrology, numerology) are epistemologically equal.
Now you've confirmed it. Pragmatists join with perspectivism,
situatedness and social constructionism--various names for what passes
for conventional wisdom in many universities today. With this crowd,
science is merely one form of knowledge among many, to take or leave as
your gang (ethnic group, sexual orientation, victimhood) wishes.
> Pragmatists think
> this because they think you can be a perfectly logical and reasonable
> and intellectual if you are a convinced Nazi, just the same as a
> convinced liberal or conservative or religious fundamentalist. The
> moral engine is not reason, as if you could argue a Nazi down, but
> passion, getting people to feel sorry about the immiseration of other
> people, jerking their tears at the sight of Holocaust victims. Rorty's
> point is that there is no way to answer the Nazi, there is no way to
> argue with him. The Nazi has different moral intuitions. We beg the
> question over each other when we argue because we are using different
> assumptions. However, while we can't answer the Nazi, Rorty urges that
> we can convert him. This doesn't occur by argumentation, it occurs by
> persuading him with pictures of the atrocities he has done, accounts of
> how the Jewis h family acts and behaves and loves just like the Nazi
> family, that the Nazi shouldn't exclude the Jew from his
> we-consciousness. Clear thinking and reason and rationality are great.
> But Hume's point is that our clear thinking will always be in the
> service of our passional natures. In other words, clear thinking occurs
> on the model of a 5-step proof and that will always be in the service of
> a final vocabulary.
So if we can't persuade the Nazi to change his evil ways, what would
Rorty have us do with him? Try to convert him with photos while he
turns on the gas? Give me a break. Talk about ivory tower naivete.
> So we are led back to our question: does Pirsig want to answer the Nazi?
> I think the answer is still inconclusive.
I think the answer is conclusive. Pirsig shoots him.
> To bring this question through one last twist, one last spin of the
> hermeneutical wheel, I will offer the most compelling reason I've found
> to believe that Pirsig thinks that the Nazi should be compelled to play
> our game. It hinges on the acquisition of our moral intuitions and
> hence, as everyone might guess, on Dynamic Quality.
Pirsig isn't going to sit around and wait for a Nazi to have a DQ
moment while the slaughter goes on. Nazis will be compelled to play our
game only when we play their game and win. We did and we won.
Platt
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