From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed May 11 2005 - 22:53:03 BST
worth
Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 17:40:45 -0400
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Hi Sam and all,
Sam, your post raised so many issues that I have so much to say about, but
in the interests of keeping this discussion focused (as advertised) I'm
going to try and just jump right to the meat of this thing.
SAM
..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?
R
I don't think so and I base this guess on a few indicators.
First, the last page of ZMM. Chris asks his father, the now reawakened
Phaedrus, if he can have a motorcycle when he gets older. Phaedrus tells
him someday, if he takes care of it. Chris asks Phaedrus if he'll teach him
how to take care of it and Phaedrus says sure and adds that Chris has been
watching him do it the whole trip. Phaedrus tells Chris he'll be able to
take care of it if he has the right attitude, that the right attitude is the
key. So here, in the final moments of the story, we have talk of caring, of
having the right attitude, and of motorcycle maintenance, and these themes
are derived from the narrator's thread. This suggests to me that the
reawakening of Phaedrus did not (at least entirely) compromise the validity
of what the narrator had to say about Quality and care and motorcycles and
presumably, individual worth.
Second, the letter from Pirsig to Redford published in the Guidebook, which
is a treasure trove of information about the relationship between Phaedrus
and the narrator and the literary purposes each were crafted to serve (i'm
sure most here will have read it). In the letter, Pirsig talks about how
the narrator is meant to appear to the reader to be an average, everyday,
boring guy, who only starts to become interesting as we delve deeper and
deeper into his thoughts over the course the novel. Where as he may first
appear to be a mild-mannered motorcycle mechanic the more we see what he's
got going on inside (i.e. the awakening of Phaedrus), the more interesting
he becomes to us. Finally, we are meant to understand that that narrator is
"Phaedrus himself, broken, his mind half destroyed, struggling desperately
to recover." In this sense, we might believe that the part of the narrator
that Pirsig dismisses as "socially dominated" is the uninteresting part, the
boring veil of a personality that was patched together after Phaedrus was
destroyed; while the Chautauqua about Quality and excellence and such, the
very thoughts which make the narrator become interesting to the reader, is
the part of the narrator that is still Phaedrus, the half that's struggling
to wake up, subconsciously infusing the narrator's thoughts with his own
ideas about Quality. This might explain why the awakened Phaedrus still
hangs on to caring, and the right attitude, and motorcycle maintenance.
SAM
> 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.
R
Another thing Pirsig talked about in his letter to Redford was about how ZMM
was influenced by Henry James' novella "Turn of the Screw". In that story,
a nanny tries to protect a child from a ghost. The story is told from the
nanny's point of view and so the reader doesn't realize that there is no
ghost; it's all in the nanny's head and the nanny herself is the only threat
to the child. Similarly, in ZMM we find the narrator trying to protect
Chris from the what he believes to be the threat of the ghost of Phaedrus.
Since the story is told through the narrator's eyes, the reader is meant to
believe that the narrator is the good guy and Phaedrus (the madman) is the
threat. But everything we learn about Phaedrus is tainted by the narrator's
own opinions of him and we eventually learn that at least some of those
opinions were wrong. For example, Chris was never threatened by Phaedrus,
the only threat was the narrator himself. From this, it may stand to reason
that the extreme and other-worldly portrait of Phaedrus painted by the
narrator was not quite as fair as it might have been, colored by the
narrator's own confusion. As discussed above, we see that the reawakened
Phaedrus still shares many of the narrator's feelings about attitude and
caring, and love of motorcycle riding. This is not to suggest that the
narrator's pragmatism and Phaedrus's metaphysics can be reconciled, rather,
it's to suggest that both carry on, in tension with each other, within the
reawakened Phaedrus. This may be evidenced by the fact that the same
tension carries on, as Matt has continuously pointed out, within the pages
of his next book. No longer half-pragmatist zombie and half-metaphysician
ghost, he's reintegrated, having regained possession of all of his faculties
and thoughts... even the thoughts that conflict with other thoughts.
Reading it this way, we may view the MoQ as the reawakened Phaedrus trying
to design a metaphysics that can comfortably accommodate his pragmatic
instincts as well (whether this attempt was a success is, I suppose, up to
each of us to decide for ourselves). This tension might also explain (at
least partially) the variation in the treatment of Socrates; the
metaphysician in Phaedrus wants to lionize Socrates for dying for the truth,
but the pragmatist in Phaedrus wants to remind us that truth is what is good
in the way of our own beliefs.
SAM
> 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?
R
The answer I'm getting at is that is that there is no answer. I suggest we
read LILA as a portrait of a philosophically conflicted free-thinker trying
to get his beliefs to hang together. Those of us that want the individual
worth themes of ZMM to carry over will (as Matt might say) cheer on Phaedrus
when talks like a pragmatist and just stare at the ground innocently
whistling when he starts cozying up to Socrates, and we'll just correct the
MoQ accordingly (like your own Eudiamonic project, or Matt's Pragmatic MoQ).
SAM
> 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?
R
Pirsig talks about the relationship of arete with the MoQ starting on page
433 in my edition of LILA (he carries it back to the Sanskrit Rta - 'the
cosmic order of things'). However, even after rereading the material, I'm
not sure I have anything to add to the discussion of individual worth. See
what you think.
SAM
> 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.
R
I agree with every word of that and that's why I like my suggested reading
above, which allows the philosophical tension between the narrator's
pragmatism and Phaedrus's metaphysics over into the reawakened Phaedrus...
the philosophical conversation eternally spinning within him, as it was
before the shock-treatment, as it's supposed to be.
SAM
> 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.
R
Then you push back Sam. I'm with you.
That's all I've got for now.
take care
rick
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