From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat May 14 2005 - 00:50:34 BST
I think Sam raises some very good questions and begins a very good analysis.
The literary quality of Pirsig’s books make for the pulling out of
philosophical theses difficult and dangerous work, and I think that’s
intended. In what follows, I’m going to comment on Sam’s starter post and
offer a few different readings of the books. I think all of them are
consonant with Rick and Sam’s readings, and in the end they offer no real
positive answer to Sam’s questions. I don’t say that because I don’t think
there is no answer to them. In fact, I will keep offering answers as I go
along, but the reason I don’t think this is a positive answer will hopefully
be a little clearer by the end.
First, I want to say that I think Sam’s questions are far more interesting
than some of the questions asked by others about the systematic structure of
the MoQ. Those questions can be important, or at least reach a level of
some importance, but I question the desire to construct a systematic
metaphysics out of Pirsig's writings. Pirsig's writings are the way they
are precisely because Pirsig doesn't want to simply create a metaphysics.
That would simply be at the intellectual level, when the point of _both_
books, as Sam points out, is to present all the facets together to show that
all of them are needed. And all of them together are arête, wisdom, the
pursuit of individual worth.
In other words, I think Sam’s right when he tentatively suggests that arête
should be identified with the entire forest of static patterns because an
“individual,” a “person,” is just that forest. We don't _have_ the forest,
we are the forest. I think this might also be just another way of saying
that arête is Dynamic Quality (though the reasons for this I can’t explore
right now). And pursuing philosophy, which we can broadly call the pursuit
of wisdom and seeing how things hang together, fits naturally with the
metaphor Sam’s brought out of Lila: seeing how our forest hangs together
brings us wisdom, particularly as we try and change the forest (which is the
DQ/SQ dynamic). So, pursuing simply a Metaphysics of Quality may be
helpful, but it isn't the whole thing (as many would, and certainly should,
acknowledge). The whole thing is seeing the whole thing together, the
breaking it into parts may help us to see. This actually brings me to why I
find it much more interesting to write about Pirsig not in a systematic kind
of a way, but in a literary-reading kind of a way. I don't want to
construct a metaphysical system as some do, I want to read the novels with
all their rhetorical tools and tropes and metaphors and analogies and
excavate their meaning and significance that way. And I think, it would
seem, Pirsig would say that that would be the best way to do it, because
otherwise you lose sight of the whole.
I’d now like to offer a few very general readings of ZMM, in the hopes of
supporting some of the things I’ve said so far. (I think these readings are
entirely aligned with Rick’s reading.) I think the way to read the book is
as a philosophical dialogue the same way as Plato's dialogues are read, but
even more complicated (if that's possible). Despite the fact that we know
Socrates is the hero, what we don't know, because of Socratic irony, is what
Socrates means. Many have read irony to mean the simple contradiction of
what is said. Alexander Nehamas, though (in his brilliant book, The Art of
Living), argues that irony isn’t as easy as all that. Irony completely
hides the direction of meaning, so you don’t know whether a basic,
contradictory 180 is intended, or something completely other. (And it is
hidden not only from the audience, but from the ironist themselves.) So the
philosophy of Socrates is always obscured, behind a curtain, never available
for direct scrutiny. You can only see it out of the corner of your eye
because wherever Socrates is pointing is not the direction he necessarily
wants you looking.
I would argue that the same thing is going on in ZMM except we don't even
know who the hero is until the end, and even then you are left wondering if
we should think that. The book is soaked in allegory and irony and the
author's point of view is only available out of the corner of your eye. It
is written to be a philosophical journey, a journey that takes you through a
set of hoops and stages but has no definite end point. It is designed to
make you think, but not necessarily about any particular thing, let alone
any particular way. So Pirsig is both all of the views, as Rick quotes
Pirsig as saying, and _none of the views_ of ZMM. And I think this type of
reading is going on in Lila, too, though the book isn't nearly so cleverly
or fantastically crafted (much as Plato lost his craft as you move from the
early to the later dialogues).
So reading ZMM for doctrinal points, for philosophical theses, is frought
with peril as you are never sure what Pirsig means. All you have is the
Narrator's presentation, but by the middle of the book you are led to wonder
who's in control of the show (having learned of Phaedrus' real identity),
and by the end of the book, after Phaedrus' triumphant return, you are led
to wonder at what point Phaedrus began to dominate the Narrator, and so the
presentation of the book itself. What we are left with, I think, are a
clear series of philosophical episodes that start by being dominated by the
Narrator, but are gradually replaced by Phaedrus' concerns, so "Narrator
sections" (like the section on gumption) come fewer and fewer, until you
reach the end of the book which is an extended meditation on Phaedrus'
experience in Chicago. And as I mentioned, the most complicated feature of
this whole model is that we don't know who the hero is, Narrator or
Phaedrus. The Narrator through the beginning half of the book makes
Phaedrus look like the bad guy, but through our extended ponderings over
Phaedrus' demise we are made to feel sympathetic for Phaedrus which leads us
to view Phaedrus as the hero, which reflects in the book by Phaedrus'
triumph. The way ZMM is written is to have us move in stages through our
feelings for the Narrator and Phaedrus and with the action in the book
unfolding as a reflection of _our_ feelings towards the preceding action.
As our feelings for Phaedrus wax, so does his dominance in the story. This
of course brings us to the perplexing and infinitely interesting conclusion
that the real audience of the story is the Author himself, not knowing how
the book is going to end until he gets there because he is taking the
journey with us, witnessing the events again as we see them for the first
time, but the journey he is on is a psychical one. He changes as the story
unfolds, but that is the point for us also: we are supposed to change
through the story. But because of the obfuscating mask of irony, the change
intended is hidden even to us.
I suggested once somewhere (in a post I think), that we should read ZMM as
having three main characters, Narrator, Phaedrus, and the Author, and we
should read them in the fashion of Plato's Allegory of the Charioteer (which
is from Plato's Phaedrus and Pirsig touches on it briefly in ZMM): two
separate horses, both at war with each other, pulling the chariot in two
different directions (though not necessarily completely in opposite
directions; think of the physical description of a chariot allegorically and
then remember that (as Nehamas argues) irony does not mean that a statement
means the opposite of what it says, but simply something different) and the
charioteer is trying to find a mean course between the two. The Narrator
and Phaedrus are warring over the Author's mind. Now, Pirsig says that the
difference between the Narrator and Phaedrus is the difference between
social and intellectual patterns. I think this a bad description. I think
a better description (as I suggest in "Confessions") is between the
Pragmatist Impulse and the Metaphysical Impulse. And after suitable
revision of the nature that Sam’s begun in the "Eudaimonic MoQ," these
should both be seen as two impulses in the _social_ level, namely because
the intellectual level eventually collapses into it. What's left for a
fourth level is the creation of the individual--something that I think a
prominent Greek scholar argues occured in Greece, though not for the reasons
Pirsig says. Pirsig thinks something important occured in Greece because
philosophy started--so he calls the fourth level the "intellectual level."
The scholar I'm thinking of (hell if I can remember his name) thinks
something important occured in Greece because democracy started. I think
this is why we should follow Sam in calling the fourth level eudaimonic.
So, in answer to Sam’s broad question: I think Sam’s perfectly right when he
suggests that the MoQ, as the end product of the “philosophically conflicted
free-thinker trying to get his beliefs to hang together,” as Rick
excellently called Pirsig, doesn’t accommodate the notion of arête very
well. I think Sam is right in calling the social/intellectual distinction
into question. The social/intellectual distinction seems to divorce truth
from social opinion which I think is the exact point of Pirsig’s
“discreteness” claim for the static levels. However, I also think Rick is
right in calling Lila the “portrait” of this conflicted free-thinker.
In the end, I think, a moment of deconstruction is called for. Sam points
out an allegorical motif I had never really thought of in Lila, between the
MoQ hierarchy and the major “characters” (which includes the boat and the
river). I like it, but if I may press the allegory, I think it deconstructs
itself on just the basis I pointed out above, just as Plato’s allegories
deconstruct themselves (as people like Derrida have been pointing out for
years). If we are to take the book as a portrait of a thinker, with the
characters struggling internally in the book as the thinker struggles
internally, then the creation of the Metaphysics of Quality is no less a
part of that struggle. The MoQ, as a creation of Phaedrus’, is an
intellectual pattern, which by its own lights is an independently
manipulable construct. Part of that construct is the notion of
independence, and it is just there that it deconstructs along
Wittgensteinian lines about the very notion of language’s independence from
social opinion. But that, in the end I think, is no big problem because of
the literary quality of the book I mentioned at the outset. Literature was
long thought of as being more opaque to meaning than things like philosophy
and science. The deconstruction of this dualism between opaque subjects
like literature and clear subjects like philosophy is, I would suggest, one
aim of the books. This leaves us in the position we were always in:
interpreting the text. I think the aim of the books, in offering a portrait
of a thinker, puts the emphasis on our interpretation of the books, not the
interpretation of the thinker itself (which is called “authorial
intention”). When Pirsig emphasizes the living of life and the gaining of
arête and wisdom, I think he’s forcing us to make of life, and his books,
what we will. All the questions raised by the books will be our questions
because our participation in the creation of the philosophy of the books is
demanded. The answers will be our answers.
I think the triumph of ZMM is that it was almost entirely effectual, rather
than doctrinal. It has an effect on us, though the effect is entirely
personal to each person. “And what is good, Phaedrus,/And what is not
good—/Need we ask anyone these things?” I think the mistake of Lila is that
it came off as too doctrinal, as creating a philosophical doctrine that we
should toe the line of. The creation of these doctrines is not bad. Those
of us who call ourselves “philosophers” all have them, these “philosophical
theses.” My effort in reading Pirsig’s philosophy, however, has been to
point out what I think are the mistakes of some of these theses that seem to
come out of Pirsig’s writings, much more out of Lila than ZMM. As Rick says
cheekily, I think we should “cheer on Phaedrus when he talks like a
pragmatist and just stare at the ground innocently whistling when he starts
cozying up to Socrates [the Platonic parvenu].” Seeing Pirsig as a whole
thinker, he’s right when he says that philosophy is just one of those things
we do. Having “philosophical theses” is just one of the things we do. I
just happen to think some of the ones he seems to have are bad ones. The
spirit of Pirsig, though, is to see the whole of life, not just philosophy.
And in this, I think, we can all agree.
Matt
_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_focus/
MF Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_focus follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/mf/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat May 14 2005 - 07:32:05 BST