Philosophology is to philosophy as art history is to painting, Pirsig says. He uses that ridiculous-sounding word to draw a distinction between comparative analysis and original thought, between critical examination and creative production. In the tradition of Emerson's famous 1837 speech, "The American Scholar", Pirsig is calling for creativity and originality.
This is not to say that the critics and historians of philosophy serve no purpose. Like art critics, they can help us appreciate particular creations by meaningfully situating them in a wider context or tradition. Pirsig doesn't mind slapping a few philosophological labels on his own work. It has to be located somewhere on the philosophical landscape, after all. "The Metaphysics of Quality is a continuation of the mainstream of twentieth century American philosophy," Pirsig writes in Lila. "It is a form of pragmatism, of instrumentalism." Even more specifically, he identifies his MOQ with the pragmatism and radical empiricism of William James.
Charles Sanders Pierce, William and John Dewey were, more or less, the original founders of American pragmatism, although James had said that "pragmatism" was a new name for some very old ideas. The founders from this period, and the contemporary professional philosophers who follow them, are known as classical pragmatists but there is also a rival branch known as neo-Pragmatism. This latter school is roughly centered around Richard Rorty. There is a bit of a war going on between the two branches, which is pretty interesting if you're into that sort of thing.
I take David Granger's book, John Dewey, Robert Pirsig, and the Art of Living, as good evidence that Pirsig and Dewey are of the same school. (Did you know that Dewey uses the motorcycle mechanic to talk about the quality of aesthetic experience?) My recent investigation of James produced more than enough evidence to convince me of their sympatico. In fact, it's a little bit spooky.
John Stuhr, Editor of Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy: Essential Readings and Interpretive Essays,
In Beyond Realism and Antirealism: John Dewey and the Neopragmatists,
In Pragmatism as Post-Postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey,
In Philosophy Americana: Making Philosophy at Home in American Culture,
William James's Radical Reconstruction of Philosophy
Robert Richardson's biography, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism,
-Dave Buchanan
dmf says
February 22, 2012 at 10:24 pmall that insider baseball aside what exactly do we get from Pirsig that isn’t laid out in greater detail in say Dewey, Peirce or Justus Buchler?
David Buchanan says
February 24, 2012 at 1:55 pmInsider baseball on a philosophy blog? Oh, say it ain’t so. I’m shocked (SHOCKED!) to learn there is gambling at this casino. The irony of this complaint is especially rich coming, as it does, from the lord of the links. By my calculation, dmf, your question is 93% snark but I’ll pretend it’s a real question anyway.
I may have given the impression (classic v neo) that there is some sort of orthodoxy to which one must submit in order to rightly be called a pragmatist – but that’s really not the case. Answering your question about Pirsig’s contribution will allow me to dispel that impression.
“Pragmatism stands for no particular results,” James said, “it is a method only.” He used the image of a hotel to illustrate what he meant. Each room in the hotel is occupied by a philosopher and each one is pursuing a different interest. There are inquiries into science, art, religion, politics and just about anything else one can imagine. In this analogy, pragmatism is the hallway that every philosopher must pass through in order to get into their respective rooms. This common corridor is a method only and the particular results will be produced by each philosopher in their respective rooms. What this means, I think, is that pragmatism is not something to be finished or completed like, say, the plans to construct a hotel. It’s a tool that can be used for any number of inquiries.
Pirsig’s contribution will certainly include the work he did in his own room, in addition to the things he may have done to improve the common corridor. As he sees it, his own “Quality” can fuse pragmatism and radical empiricism together in a way that James’s “pure experience” could not. He also thinks that adding his evolutionary hierarchy to the pragmatic theory of truth would protect it from charges of relativism and/or crass commercialism. (I tend to think those charges are bogus in the first place and that James doesn’t really need any help on that score.) These two moves would be chief among Pirsig’s contribution to the common corridor – but I think the work he did in his own room is far more interesting and important.
“Quality” is the only thing about which Pirsig claims any originality and yet, paradoxically, when he’s wrapping things up at the end of his second book, he says the MOQ is “not a new idea”. He says it’s “the oldest idea known to man.” One can almost see it coming at various points throughout ZAMM, his first book. His inquiry into Quality leads him to very diverse places. He identifies his Quality as the Sophists’s reason for being, He finds that it is interchangeable with the Tao. He finds it in the central doctrine of the Upanishads: “Thou Art That”. He wonders if Hegel’s monism is the same as his own mystical monism. He finds it in the native American notion of “Manito”, and he finds its expression in American slang and folk wisdom. In the first book he traces the terms for Quality back to the pre-Socratics and in the second book he goes even further back by tracing the etymology back into ancient Sanskrit. He’s doing a kind of intellectual archeology or a genealogy of Quality. In the metaphors of the first book he’s cutting a new trail up a very old mountain and in the second book he puts it in terms of clearing old canals and channels that have been silted up over the centuries. The idea here, is that he’s not trying to say anything new so much as he’s trying to say very old things in a fresh way. These things tend to fossilize, get preserved in dead languages or end up on a Hallmark greeting card. What he’s doing up there in his room is a kind of philosophical mysticism, one particular permutation of the perennial philosophy, a version that speaks to people in our cultural and historical context.
Bruce Adam says
February 24, 2012 at 2:38 pmThanks again.
Tat Tvam Asi, David.
dmf says
February 24, 2012 at 3:50 pmno snark intended just don’t see any value in rehearsing the usual arguments over these matters such as is there actually a “method” to/of pragmatism?
how do you understand the split between James and Peirce?
David Buchanan says
February 24, 2012 at 7:02 pmSigh. Well, obviously your snark-o-meter is broken. I sincerely doubt that you could get any reasonable person to believe that it’s not snarky to say, “his work is a pointless rehearsal of the usual arguments”. It’s also worth pointing out that you only repeated this blanket dismissal as if no answer had been given. This only confirms my suspicion that it wasn’t a real question in the first place. You’re just determined to be dismissive. Okay, that’s fine. You can only lead a horse to water and all that. But it sure doesn’t make for a fruitful conversation. Thanks for very little.
dmf says
February 24, 2012 at 7:40 pmwhat are you talking about I didn’t characterize your work as the same old arguments , I was saying that I didn’t wish to get into the same old arguments by questioning your take on what pragmatism represents (and how this does or does not relate to Pirsig) but was simply trying to follow what your understanding of that history is and especially how Peirce fits in (we are heading into semiotics soon)
not sure what the chip on your shoulder is about but I’ll leave you to it.
David Buchanan says
February 24, 2012 at 9:20 pmHmmm. Your comments are plainly on display and I suspect that nobody will find your denials of snarkiness to be plausible. But, again, I ‘ll pretend that it’s a real question. Basically, pragmatism is method for settling metaphysical disputes and for the last century or so this usually comes down to a contest between science and religion. And so I like to arrange the three main founders on a little goldilocks-like continuum wherein Pierce is too scientific, James is too religious, and Dewey is Just right. Pierce is most likely to be taken up among realists these days and James is way too popular in the theology department. Pierce did not like where James was taking things, as you probably, and changed the name of his own work, as he put it, to keep it safe from kidnappers. Funny thing about that is that James was Pierce’s biggest cheerleader, gave him money and friendship way beyond the call of duty. As I see it, James stole the show almost entirely so that Dewey was a bit of follower, but maybe that’s only because he was younger and he certainly did a hell of a lot of work after James was gone – for a half a century afterward he wrote and wrote. Once upon a time, Dewey was huge deal. Helped to found the ACLU, NAACP, criticized FDR from the left, reformed education. And James, .. people don’t realize his impact. He coined a gazillion phrases and terms. I’ll bet every American hears one of his coinages a least once a week.
dmf says
February 25, 2012 at 12:10 pmI see, the things that you want to add to James via Pirsig read to me much like the kinds of things that Peirce was angry about him leaving out and which James left out for principled reasons so we have very different understandings of that history.
David Buchanan says
February 26, 2012 at 1:48 pmCould you be a bit more specific? What “things” am I adding to James? I wasn’t aware of any such additions. (My reply included a description of pragmatism as a method only, and NOT as the kind of thing that stands for some finished result.) What “things” did James leave out of Piece for principled reasons? I mean, you want to stake out a position that’s “very different” from mine and yet both of them are as vague as they can be. Give some names to these” things”, will you?
Bruce Adam says
February 23, 2012 at 12:24 amCan’t argue with those sources………especially The Gourds !
dmf says
February 23, 2012 at 8:19 amthe folks who are invested in saving Dewey from neo-pragmatist linguistic turn often missed the point which is not to say that don’t we learn from and act out of our experiences (Rorty was an early champion of radical behaviorism and since his time there have been great advances in ‘enactivist’ psychology) but that this has limited value to the project of developing/advancing justifications, which brings us full loop around to the earlier discussions of the ought/is problem, and Dewey’s honorific of “intelligent” falls down here just as “Quality” does.
http://herts.academia.edu/DanielDHutto/Papers/185143/Enactivism_Why_be_Radical
David Buchanan says
February 26, 2012 at 2:03 pmThe defenders of Dewey often missed the point? Which defenders? What point do you think they missed? Again, this is simply to vague to have any meaning. You’ll also have to explain the relevance of your reference to behaviorism and what you mean by “falls down here”. Where is “here” and how does it fail to do what? Maybe I need to read the linked paper to understand your comments.
pirsigfan says
February 23, 2012 at 9:14 amI am guessing that political correctness and the liberal stance that any affinity w/ deity in a philosopher’s work places her/him on the unmentionable list.
This is boen out by the utter silence of the late great American peagmatist philosophrt, Chuckie Hartshorne. He was in there big time w/ all the names David mentions in this post.
I cannot find the online article where Chuckie champions American philosophers, especially the praggies.
I can without any reservation but urge any of you interested in an example of superior pragmatic thought informed by a process oriented outlook on life to take at least one look at this powerful (and easy to read) genius
http://www.anthonyflood.com/hartshornephilosophyafter50years.htm
I promise you will be richly rewarded and enlightened.
dmf says
February 23, 2012 at 10:15 amthe reasons for seeing Hartshorne as a theologian and not a philosopher are philosophical and perhaps when we get to the post-structuralists we can talk more about Presence and Ontotheology, but without some textual reference points this is unlikely to be a very productive topic of discussion.
pirsigfan says
February 23, 2012 at 11:10 amdmf, and everyone else here
Just try out the paper I link. He is doing a Rorty-style sweep of his own philosophical development, and the easy prose can help you get a good feel for process thinking. btw, he advised Rorty’s thesis on Whitehead. Also he wrote this while in Austin in the 1970s)).
dmf says
February 23, 2012 at 2:31 pmyes thanks I knew many of these folks, it does raise the possibility that Dewey may have been the first post-theology philosopher in the US as Nietzsche was the “first psychologist”.
pirsigfan says
February 23, 2012 at 6:55 pmdmf
I would especially ask for you, David, and Mark to read this paper on an organic naturalism. Bracket out your predispositions to H and W, and especially some of H’s theistics in the latter parts of the paper.
Doesn’t H’s pragmatic, empirical, nature-informed prose grip you all as ‘wow, that makes sense from my experience?’
David Buchanan says
February 24, 2012 at 3:49 pmI think anyone who’s enthusiastic about philosophy is automatically more interesting than most people. But Burl, buddy, dude, why must every conversational road lead to Whitehead? How many conversation topics have been highjacked for your Whiteheadian pleas and purposes? Don’t you realize that it’s obnoxious and just plain rude?
pirsigfan says
February 25, 2012 at 5:40 amDavid
I sincerely apologize for making you feel upset by me hijacking any comment boxes. (Is that ever actually technically possible? For sure one can hijack a forum thread.) I think of PEL more as being gathered round a big table and just talking.
And when it seems like the talk is in an area where some of the things I may have learned from process might be interesting or very pertinent, I feel it is a quality thing to chime in. It is in my genes, so to speak. I am a former teacher, after all (and you may be surprised to know the majority of students found my style enjoyable and very beneficial at breaking down difficult technical things).
I see PEL as a group to which I belong as an active member, though I do often feel like few here have ever looked into Whitehead or other processualists, despite that they are right there in the middle of so many discussions, especially this one.
If you would read the Hartshorne link (and I really hope you guys do and give me feedback), you will note H was an intense Peirce scholar (one of his professorial duties was to sort thru Peirce’s papers with Paul Weiss). He places himself as collaborator and/or student of James, Dewey, Whitehead, and even Husserl – all of whom relate to Pirsig.
I know pretty surely that few PELers have looked into process, and whenever I find something that excites me in that it could make entry into W easy, I post it. It is frustrating to try to be helpful, and I know persistent helpfulness can be a PITA, but it is just my way, I guess. (This made teaching non-majors painful for me.)
We have discussed naturalism often enough. Do look at how H brings nature alive (bracket the God talk, if you need to).
.
pirsigfan says
February 29, 2012 at 10:26 amwHAT! wHITEHEAD WAS A PRAGNATIST, TOO! hOW RUDE IS THAT?
Also, I read a paper on Dewey’s metaphysics – 100% Whiteheadian if he had tried to clear himself up.
http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/PES-Yearbook/95_docs/cunningham.html
Insight from a rude and obnoxious lout: when someone offers a self-deprecating apology, it is considered good manners to acknowledge this, and gallant to accept it.
pirsigfan says
February 29, 2012 at 10:40 amAs for Dewey needing clarity to reach Whitehead, I obnoxiously add this link (which I am reading at present) http://www.anthonyflood.com/sherburnewhiteheaddewey.htm
David Buchanan says
February 29, 2012 at 6:19 pmNo apologies are necessary, Burl, but since you mentioned it, do you realize that you’ve offered a very contradictory and demonstrably insincere apology? It’s like expressing remorse for stepping on my toe at the same time that you’re standing on my foot. Obviously, this means you’re not taking the complaint seriously. It shows a total lack of regret and demonstrates your intention to continue regardless of any complaints.
I’m not just talking about this thread either. You’ve been at it since day one and I guess it’s been at least a year now. From what I’ve gathered about you, Burl, we have very different tastes about everything. I’m left, you’re right. You don’t mind the theology and I do. Bet you a hundred bucks that I’d hate most of your record collection. Yes, you call yourself “Pirsigfan” but I’m telling you that the chances that you and I would like the same philosophical vision are zip, zero, zilch.
C’mon, Burl. Give me a break, will you? Please accept the fact that Whitehead and theology don’t interest me. It’s no use trying to cram it down my throat because that’s not how minds change and, like I said, it’s just plain rude. In effect, you are getting in the way of any conversation except the one you want to have. It’s too needy and greedy and selfish. Makes it feel all stuffy and crowded in here. No sir, I don’t want to dance, but thanks all the same.
pirsigfan says
February 29, 2012 at 11:24 pmI’m agnostic, and so are you. And if you had ever been held responsible to look at W, you would see that he was too.
As for my narrow-mindedness vs the ‘I have a liberal openness to all good philosophy’ stance that most PELers claim, be honest, you are merely parroting what your professors told you was OK to do and let you get away with in an era of lowered standards. This is philosopology that is decidedly uninterested in deep insight. Your professors most likely dissed the hard philosophers that require a synthesis w/ science (which they couldn’t be bothered to study), and stick with the pop canon, of analytic or phenomenological celebs.
Dave, you have a gift with smooth, elegant, multi-hued prose, but your self-serving [bracketing] cannot go unnoticed by any of your readers – even the groupies.
Dis me, but look at you.
John says
March 12, 2015 at 2:44 pmNice article, dmb. I’m currently reading another book along these lines, The Primal Roots of American Philosophy by Bruce Wilshire. It’s outstanding and further proof of Pirsig’s place in American Pragmatism, amongst James and Dewey. Of course he’s also a big fan of Hocking, who I’m sure is also too theistic for you, but I think you’d enjoy it anyway.
Take care.
dmf says
March 13, 2015 at 9:08 amnot sure if this was for me (dmb=dmf?) but if it was than thanks I know that line of work and yes gets too close to something like Natural Law, not sure how it is proof of anything but Bruce’s own interests (I do share his admiration for Bugbee who is sadly lost to most folks), for me the question is not a merely academic one of who is or is not part of some canon but who has is in line with the latest research into human-being.
David Buchanan says
March 13, 2015 at 10:12 amThanks, John. Wilshire’s book does seem to have a very Pirsigian ring about it, if the reviewers are to be trusted, especially the inclusion of Emerson and Thoreau and native American voices like Black Elk. In fact, the working title for Pirsig’s second book (Lila) was something like, “Them Pesky Injuns”. Glad he changed his mind about such a title (too casual and not very PC) but it is telling. Lila still includes a pretty good dose of Native culture but I think he cut out quite a lot. Hope there are notes and scraps left.