Hugo Fjelsted Alroe (alroe@vip.cybercity.dk)
Fri, 7 Nov 1997 17:32:07 +0100
On the reception of Pirsigs work in acedemia.
Anders wrote:
>First and foremost I think the reason that big P's ideas hasn't caught on
>with academic philosophers is that he published his ideas in two novels
>instead of papers. It's perhaps not easy to put one's finger on what
>difference that makes, but a paper is usually "tighter" argument-wise in a
>certain sense and Lila is just too much of a novel. You have to be ready to
>accept anything from the start, and then you have to sit down and think
>rather hard to find out what P means precisely. Also the whole tone of Lila
>is quite anti-academia, so anyone with a nice position at some university,
>who starts reading Lila will feel offended within the first 50 pages (as
>will pretty much any European until you realise that Pirsigs view (as
>expressed in Lila) of Europeans is quite limited and that whole discussion
>should be taken with a grain of salt). The second thing is that noone has
>responded to the criticism Lila was met with, there is noone to discuss the
>finer points with (until TLS came along, but we're still not ready for
>public appearance). Big P himself didn't (for reasons which are not
>entirely clear to me) respond to anything, and subsequently went into
>hiding (alright Wittgenstein did the same when he had published the
>Tractatus, but he came back and there were no criticism to speak of at the
>time).
I think you might be right about the effect of publishing (only) in the
form of novels, but I don't think it is a sufficient explanation. In the
past century or more there has been a very negative view on metaphysics in
intellectual circles. The dominant positivistic science has scorned the
idea of doing metaphysics, there was no need for anything besides the
strictly empirical. And the philosophical tradition from Descartes, taking
off from self-inspection and consciousness, had no use for ideas on how the
world 'really was', either.
Publishing in the form of novels might as well be seen as a Pirsigs
reaction to this atmosphere of neglect and scorn towards metaphysical work.
And it may also be a necessary form due to the immense difficulty of taking
a step into MoQ-like thinking.
Having said that, I tend to agree with Bodvar that the continuing neglect
of a book with obvious philosophical intentions, is mainly due to a lack of
ability or a lack of wish to move into this world of thought and try it
out. Looking at the past few centuries of intellectual history, and the
truely revolutionary implications of MoQ, one should perhaps not be surprised.
However, there is a change underway, whether Pirsig has anything to do with
it or not, in the attitude towards metaphysics. I attended a meeting in
Aarhus, Denmark recently entitled 'The Metaphysics of Culture', featuring
Habermas and Hilary Putnam. And though the focus was not entirely on
metaphysics, I take it as a sign of change, among others. Perhaps this
change is simply a necessary reaction to the amount of paradoxes which has
arisen because of the long neglect of metaphysics.
Hugo
-- post message - mailto:skwok@spark.net.hk unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu May 13 1999 - 16:42:13 CEST