From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Mon Nov 10 2003 - 01:35:33 GMT
Are you a mod or a rocker?
Actually, I'm more like a MOQer.
Paul asked:
Is it fair to say that pragmatists replace metaphysical distinctions with
philosophological distinctions?
Matt replied:
Sure, metaphysics is replaced by philosophology, but realize that
philosophology is not contrasted with philosophy. I've never known what to
make of that distinction and long ago criticized it.
Pirsig says:
... Philosophology is to philosophy as musicology is to music, or as art
history and art appreciation are to art, or as literary criticism is to
creative writing. It's a derivative, secondary field, a sometimes parasitic
growth that likes to think it controls its host by analyzing and
intellectualizing its host behavior.
Literature people are sometimes puzzled by the hatred many creative
writers have for them. Art historians can't understand the venom either. He
[Phædrus] supposed the same was true of musicologists but he didn't know
enough about them. But philophologists don't have this problem at all
because the philosophers who would normally condemn them are a null-class.
They don't exist. Philosophologists, calling themselves philosophers, are
just about all there are.
You can imagine the ridiculousness of an art historian taking his
students to museums, having them write a thesis on some historical or
technical aspect of what they see there, and after a few years of this
giving them degrees that they are accomplished artists. They've never held
a brush or a mallet or a chisel in their hands. All they know is art
history.
dmb adds:
My point? Beyond the demonstration that Matt's neo-pragmatism is once again
at odds with Pirsig, my point is simply that the failure to make anything of
the distinction between philosophy and philosophology is a pretty dismal
failure indeed. And this criticism is related to my problem with slogans,
those abbreviated phrases that Matt passes off as ideas. But in this case,
the philosophological approach has him constantly using the name of great
philosophers as adjectives, such as "Kantian" and "Platonic". Now I've read
some Kant and I've read some Plato, but when I see their names used as
adjectives I still don't know what that means. Its too vague. Its too broad.
The great ones are too great to be boiled down to a single thing, so that
such terms surely have hundreds of meanings, depending on the topic and
issues at hand. Like the slogans, it only has the effect of raising
questions rather than answering them. And most of the time the most urgent
question that emerges is, "couldn't you be a little more speciific?".
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