From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk)
Date: Tue May 10 2005 - 23:23:54 BST
Hi people,
In ZMM the Narrator writes:
"I think it's about time to return to the rebuilding of *this* American
resource - individual worth. There are political reactionaries who've been
saying something close to this for years. I'm not one of them, but to the
extent they're talking about real individual worth and not just an excuse
for giving more money to the rich, they're right. We *do* need a return to
individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption. We really
do."
The Narrator is here giving the notion of individual worth a clear degree of
Quality, ie it is a good thing, it is something which should be nurtured and
affirmed. The question I'd like to explore is: where does this fit in with
the MoQ? Or is it something to be left behind?
Consider the literary structure of Lila. We have a correspondence between
the four static levels of the MoQ with four characters (so the boat is
inorganic, Lila is biological, Rigel is social and Phaedrus is intellectual)
and a correspondence between DQ and the river on which the static levels
float. Moreover, the way in which the character Phaedrus fails to engage
constructively with the character Lila seems to be an acting out of Pirsig's
point that the intellectual level cannot engage directly with the biological
level, but must rely upon the social level (Rigel - equals ritual?) in order
to cope.
Now this structure is hierarchical. The higher levels are more moral than
the lower levels, so that, where there is a conflict between levels, the
higher level must be supported (eg intellectuals must support the police, as
they safeguard the social level against the degeneracies of the biological
level). At which level does individual worth fit? Or is it a product of a
combination of levels (the forest of static patterns)?
A tension arises for me because if the characters in the novel represent the
levels, and the levels are hierarchical, then to accept the MoQ would seem
to imply that we should make ourselves more like Phaedrus in terms of our
static patterns (which certainly seems to be the aim amongst some members of
the moq.org community). Yet Pirsig, in Lila's Child, talks about his
displeasure at being identified with the character Phaedrus: "Yes, Phædrus
is overwhelmingly intellectual. He is not a mask, really, just a literary
character who is easy for me to write about because I share many of his
static values a lot of the time. I don't think big self and small self are
involved here. My editor wanted me to make him a warmer person in order to
increase reader appeal. But making him warmer would have made him more
social and weakened the contrasts between himself and Rigel and Lila that
were intended to give strength to the story. The fact that everyone seemed
to think that Phædrus was me came as an unpleasant surprise after the book
was published. I had assumed that everyone would of course know that an
author and a character in his book cannot possibly be the same person."
Clearly we must distinguish Pirsig the author from Phaedrus the character,
and where Phaedrus is an isolated, asocial, possibly amoral metaphysician,
Pirsig the author, in his presentation of Phaedrus, is distancing himself
from those very things. Elsewhere in Lila's Child Pirsig quotes a response
to an interview: "One interviewer asked me, "Are you really Phaedrus?" The
answer was, "Yes I really am Phaedrus. I also really am Richard Rigel. I
also really am Lila. I also really am the boat"." In other words, the 'I' of
Robert Pirsig is composed of all the different levels in greater or lesser
patterns of harmony.
This all suggests to me that individual worth in the sense that the Narrator
praises in ZMM is not to be identified with one level, but is the product of
a combination. However, another strand in Pirsig's writing tends against
that, and might suggest that character is a wholly third level pattern. In
the foreword to the 25th anniversary edition of ZMM Pirsig comments that the
Narrator is dominated by social values - and, of course, the passage from
ZMM that I quoted at the beginning of this post are the words of the
Narrator.
First a question: is it legitimate to take the views of the Narrator as
being the views of Pirsig? Or is the Narrator another character, in the way
that the characters of Lila are, and not to be identified with the author? I
don't know what the answer to that question is.
Second, there is clearly a sense in which the Narrator IS dominated by
social values. The Narrator's personality is one that was constructed whilst
in hospital in order to satisfy the doctors that he was not insane, and was
therefore at liberty to leave the hospital. And in that sense the eclipse of
the Narrator is a positive development within the story.
But this leaves me with a question. If the Narrator is dominated by social
patterns, does this mean that all the things he says within ZMM - such as
the comments about individual worth - are compromised? This would seem truly
bizarre, in that the Narrator is clearly operating intellectually throughout
the book (he is manipulating symbols). And just as clearly the Narrator is
analysing society (think of overlooking the freeway and describing the
expressions on the faces of drivers). So..?
I would tie this in with two elements, one relating to the story in ZMM, and
one relating to metaphysics. In ZMM the Narrator chooses not to go up the
mountain; that is, he chooses not to track to the source of a particular
philosophical problem, presumably from fear that Phaedrus would then return.
Whereas in Lila, Phaedrus has returned, and is content to 'climb the
mountain', ie explore metaphysics. So you could say that the relative status
of metaphysics has changed between the character of the Narrator in ZMM and
the character of Phaedrus in Lila. The Narrator is very pragmatic - if it
helps in daily life, it's fine, otherwise forget it (reminds me of
Wittgenstein: "What is the use of studying philosophy if it does not improve
your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?"). Whereas
Phaedrus is quite clearly not pragmatic, is quite unworldly in fact, and
pursues the metaphysical questions with abandon. I can't imagine the
Narrator being quite so socially incompetent with respect to Lila, for
example.
The second element relates to the differing status of Socrates, the founding
father of metaphysics. In ZMM the Narrator describes his rediscovery of
Phaedrus' intellectual explorations. The climax of this movement comes when
Phaedrus realises that Socrates is, in fact, one of the bad guys: "Socrates
had been one of Phaedrus' childhood heroes and it shocked and angered him to
see this dialogue taking place... Socrates is not using dialectic to
understand rhetoric, he is using it to destroy it. Phaedrus' mind races on
and on and then on further, seeing now at last a kind of evil thing, an evil
deeply entrenched in himself, which pretends to try to understand love and
beauty and truth and wisdom but whose real purpose is never to understand
them, whose real purpose is always to usurp them and enthrone itself.
Dialectic - the usurper. That is what he sees. The parvenu, muscling in on
all that is Good and seeking to contain and control it. Evil."
The Narrator then goes on to describe what Plato does with regard to arete
(excellence, aka individual worth): "Why destroy arete? And no sooner had he
asked the question than the answer came to him. Plato hadn't tried to
destroy arete. He had encapsulated it; made a permanent, fixed Idea out of
it; had converted it to a rigid, immobile Immortal Truth. He made arete the
Good, the highest form, the highest Idea of all. It was subordinate only to
Truth itself, in a synthesis of all that has gone before."
This is a rejection of traditional metaphysics, the history of western
thought. The Narrator is objecting to the raising of dialectic over
rhetoric - and it is THIS which underlies the maxim at the beginning of the
book, 'and what is good.', because the point is that you don't need a
definition of the good in order to know what the good is. (Another echo from
Wittgenstein: "It has puzzled me why Socrates is regarded as a great
philosopher. Because when Socrates asks for the meaning of a word and people
give him examples of how that word is used, he isn't satisfied but wants a
unique definition. Now if someone shows me how a word is used and its
different meanings, that is just the sort of answer I want.")
But in Lila, the status of Socrates has changed. Now he is once more the
martyr to the independence of intellectual patterns from the social level:
that 'truth stands independently of social opinion'. Instead of being an
instrument of evil, he has become an instrument of a higher evolutionary
level, and therefore more moral than those who oppose him.
This is why I think there is a problem with the structure of the MoQ. In ZMM
the Narrator quotes Kitto saying: "Arete implies a respect for the wholeness
or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialisation. It implies a
contempt for efficiency - or rather a much higher idea of efficiency, an
efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself".
Yet Phaedrus - emblem of the intellectual level, fan of Socrates - is
clearly a specialist, moreover an intellectual specialist, a master of the
art of dialectic.
So what is the problem? The problem is the question that I began with: where
does individual worth, arete, fit in with the MoQ? Or is it something to be
left behind?
If Phaedrus is the emblem of the higher level, and that higher level is the
realm of abstract thought, manipulation of symbols etc, and Socrates is the
martyr to the independence of the intellectual level from the social level -
is arete the social level? (That would seem to relapse into equating arete
with virtue, which the Narrator unpicks as a mistake in ZMM). Yet if arete
does not belong to the social level, how does it relate to the intellect?
The argument of ZMM is that the intellect (dialectic) is the parvenu,
overthrowing rhetoric which is the proper means for teaching Quality, the
best, arete. Or is arete the equivalent of DQ, that which can't be defined?
Possibly - but clearly it can be taught, and there were settled ways of
teaching it, through rhetoric, which are static patterns. So the question
comes - what is the proper classification of those static patterns?
What lies behind all these questions is the notion of philosophical ascent,
our pursuit of Quality. It has always seemed to me that the Narrator is a
voice of wisdom, and he resembles Wittgenstein in many ways, whom I also
revere as a deeply human guide. In terms of what I wish to pursue in my
life, it is precisely that pursuit of Quality, the 'wholeness of life',
which corresponds to arete, or individual worth, or (as I put it in my essay
on moq.org) the eudaimonia which I find to be of high Quality, both static
and dynamic. Whereas the intellectualism of Phaedrus, and the construal of
the fourth level as represented by that character, I find to be sterile, of
little interest.
I suspect that Pirsig himself pursues a broad and rich understanding of
arete. This is why he didn't wish to be identified with Phaedrus, the
character in Lila. Yet somehow, the structure of the MoQ has elevated
dialectic above arete, and there is this consistent tendency, especially in
MD, to glamorise Socrates, and to dismiss the social level as contemptible,
which has always seemed profoundly unwise to me.
Is the arete that we are to pursue an intellectual one? No. Is it to be
identified with DQ - partly, surely, but does that mean that there are no
accumulated static latches that can be absorbed to gain insight and develop
our individual worth? If so - what about ZMM itself?
Surely we are to pursue individual worth, precisely the 'individual
integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption' that the Narrator
praises, the 'duty towards self' which is the good translation of dharma,
the 'wholeness of life' which Kitto refers to. That, it seems to me, is what
the highest level of the MoQ should be about. Individual worth is not to be
left behind, it is, in fact, right at the heart of all that has Quality. It
just seems that the way the MoQ is dominantly interpreted pushes it to one
side, in favour of dialectic and that parvenu called Socrates. We must
return to the rhetoric of the Sophists.
Anyone who has reached this far and remains interested is referred to my
essay called 'The Eudaimonic MoQ' on the moq.org website.
Sam
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