Donald T Palmgren (lonewolf@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)
Mon, 23 Feb 1998 09:45:49 +0100
Hi, squad,
Hugo, your statments about contextualism are intresting. I know
little of the Pragmatist but I know Dewey started out as a Hegelian, whom
I'm more familier with, and contextualization sound very much like Hegel's
method. If you've studied general Western Philosophy, forget everything
you've heard about Hegel. His is an extreemly complex thought and has been
variously interpreted and what you encounter in Intro. to Phil. books are
really cruddy characitures. Hegel aproches phil. w/ this real radical
idea: Our ancistors wern't stupid! They were just as bright as we are --
they simply lived in a different intellectual/social context. And their
thoughts deserve to be a part of ours: "The way to Science is already,
itself Science." Your "evolutionary metaphysics" sounds, as well, quite
Hegelian. The PHENOMONOLOGY is self-described as the history of experience
-- "experience" he defines as the on-going comparison of subject and
object, through which both, stage-by-stage, transform -- moving through
the process of realizing that they are one-and-the-same. It is a
"coming-of-age" novel.
I would like to groove on Hegel some more, but perhaps later. As
for your observation that questioning SOM isn't unique to Pirsig, your
correct. To respond to your question: I think it was Kant who first took
on S-O distinction as an assumption (perhaps a necessary one?), but my
understanding of Kant is sadly to weak to easily show that. The Kantian
system is a complex machine full of pullys and belts and fly-wheels. But
German Idealism (which was a very brief period -- it only ran from the
CoPR, 1780, to Hegel's PHENOMONOLOGY, 1807) can be seen as a series of
approches to closeing off the distinction between knower and known -- to
colapse the dichotomy. IMO Hegel did a masterful job.
Kant posited a unity, but said that it was inherently unknowable,
like the Tao ("The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao") or
Dynamic-Q. Hegel comes along and says, "You say there's this thing which
no one can know...Well, how do YOU know?" and then procedes to unwrap the
box -- by (you could say) contextualizing it.
Now, my fellows, as far as being still in S-O-thinking and "not
getting" Pirsig... Please. For one thing, Magnas admited that he didn't
say anything Pirsig didn't ("It's all in LILA," something to that effect).
But I'm not really interested in re-stating or re-treding Mr.P's ground --
ZMM and LILA just arn't the kinds of books that need excessive explication
-- they're not like CoPR or Hegel or some of these essotericly complexed
Phil. tomes. Pirsig is an excelent writer and states his case very clearly
(for which he should be commended).
But that's beside my point. No one has said anything "in Pirsig's
defence" (not that I feel he's under attack, but the battle flags are
comming out of the woodwork) that I myself wouldn't have put forward 5
years ago. (I passed off copies of ZMM to friends and said "Read!" and
when they asked why I said, "Well, it will cure science" or some-such.)
So if you must think of me as "the enemy" (Lord, help us) at least
characterize me as ... well, a fallen angel or something -- strayed from
the flock (Gasp!). I won't argue w/ you (or agree).
See, I set out to proove Pirsig right, and I figured I could
re-enforce the MoQ by seeking manefestations of it elsewher (like you've
been doing here) -- I found some, then more... then more. So many I
realized that Pirsig hadn't said anything as new as I'd assumed. Pirsig is
unique in form (a psudo-atobio-novel-philosophical treatise) but not
content.
I realized, for instance, that he missed (or mis-read) Kant. I
asked why. Perhaps because he read S-O as M-B AND subjective-objective?
(Now I read ZMM 3 times and LILA once before I caught this, but once you
see it, you see it everywhere in his books.)
Now you can say I agree w/ MoQ or I don't -- the truth is, as I've
said, I find that kind of partisanship is the ultimate roadblock to
original thought and half the reason achedemic philosophy is in such a
sorry state. (If you learn anything from Pheadrus' experience in ZMM it
should be (God, I hate saying that; it's such a cliche) that the "We are
saved; they are damned" mentality is a deathblow to Phil.) Everyone is so
cought up in who wins the game we forget it stop and ask, "What game are
we playing?"
What is philosophy?
What's the pay-off?
What counts as understanding here?
And when someone points the Withering Finger of Scorn at us and demands,
"WHAT REALLY EXISTS?" (that's metaphysics) we go diving for answers (as
school trains us to do) when perhaps we should stop and think about the
question itself. (Hegel, Wittgenstein and my friend and mentoir Dr. Dwight
Van de Vate are teaching me to do that.)
So, now the discusion is really starting to come alive. Let's
loosen up our minds and see where it takes us. Now, Hugo wants to see more
Kant. Are the rest of you interested? Breakneck Kant Part 2?
In the meantime, I like this Absolut truth debate. Magnas makes
an excelent point: We say that X is Absolutly true (which, by-the-way,
means true in all time and place) -- but that's something we SAY -- from
the here and now. It's a posture, a stance, or an asumption.
Now Peter can come back and say, "But what we say about the truth
changes, not the truth. If Jueleus Ceaser jumped off a cliff he'd fall at
9.2 meters per second per second, even though they didn't have the law of
gravity at that time."
Science ASSUMES that laws are continuous across space and time
(remember your Kant), but do we KNOW that? This is the coar of
metaphysics.
Enough of me. The Fallen Angel is takeing off for the weekend. See
you soon, and be good, now. :)
Donny
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