To wrap up my thoughts on this subject: Probably the most interesting part of this Pirsig immersion experience for me has been thinking about his stance as a lone philosopher, rebelling against academia. Like Ayn Rand's, much of Pirsig's attitude towards academia seems to be a direct result of some assholes he had to deal with in school: arrogant professors, sheeplike fellow Continue Reading …
Search Results for: "lila notes"
Lila Notes, Pt. 4: Pirsig Solves All Philosophical Problems in Five Pages
If my notes here have gotten a bit dismissive sounding, it's largely to provide a counterweight to Dave's discipleship. This is not to diss Dave (or Bo or other Pirsig fans posting on our board here), but my approach, and the approach I see in enthusiasts like Katie re. Foucault or Matt Evans did for Plato is yes, to try to figure how out to charitably elaborate and defend the Continue Reading …
Lila Notes, Pt. 3: Pirsig’s Teleological Hierarchy
In Pt. 2, I described Pirsig's notion of dynamic vs. static quality, which should sound a lot like naturalistic moral intuitionism as discussed in our Hume/Smith episode. All there is is people (or, more widely for Pirsig, any being that is capable of reacting affirmatively or negatively to anything: judging agents, we might want to call them), and morality can only be founded Continue Reading …
Lila Notes, Pt. 2: Dynamic vs. Static Quality
The big distinction made in Lila is between dynamic quality and static quality. Dynamic quality is Quality in ZAMM, i.e. the immediate, moment-to-moment recognition of something's awesomeness level, but also in ZAMM, he wants us to recognize quality in classical (as opposed to romantic) forms, for example, the quality of the structure of a motorcycle. Since dynamic quality is Continue Reading …
Lila Notes, Pt. 1: On the Legitimacy of Skimming the Narrative Bits
Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals,as you may have heard, is Pirsig's sole follow-up book to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, though he's written some other articles and things since then that I hope to look into via future blog posts here. In it, he elaborates his Metaphysics of Quality further, applies it to critique modern society and the hippie movement in particular Continue Reading …