From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Wed Mar 26 2003 - 16:55:16 GMT
Hi Matt,
I've been away too.
> Matt:
> Since you asked me for an expansion (one I will give in a moment), I was
> hoping you could briefly expand on 'intellect as Platonist'. I have
strong
> feeling I would agree, I just want to know a bit more clearly what it
> is.
Now that I've read the Kingsley book, I'm a bit more aware that I am
sometimes careless when I use the term 'Platonist'. Perhaps neo-Platonist
would be more accurate, ie that the intellect is the highest value, and that
it depends upon a particular Socratic/definitional/essentialist approach to
be developed; plus which, it is best developed when divorced from emotions.
That probably summarises what I think neo-Platonism and Pirsig have in
common re the intellect.
> I assume what you want me to summarize is the second half of that
> statement.
Actually it was both bits, but I think I get the appearance/reality
distinction.
> As
> pragmatists would have it, the mistake of mysticism is to think that
> reality is an object that one needs to move towards. This is the same
> mistake we charge modernists with when they hypostatize Truth and Goodness
> and make them objects of inquiry, something we need to move towards.
OK, I see the point, but (as always) we need to remember that not all
mysticisms are the same. In the 'Cloud of Unknowing' all concepts are
abandoned - so, I would argue, the classical Christian mystics don't see
reality(God) as an object. It's all about stopping the mind's grasping (ie
leading the fly out of the fly-bottle, to use Wittgenstein's image).
> This is why I find Pirsig's "mysticism," his refusal to
> define Quality, so in link with Rorty. Rorty doesn't think we should
> search after an underlying reality, either; we are always and everywhere
in
> touch with it. So I struggle with Pirsig's mysticism because it wants to
> incorporate an appearance/reality distinction while repudiating it by
> saying we are always in touch with Reality. Or, at least, it is very easy
> to read Pirsig as incorporating an appearance/reality distinction and
> people do on a regular basis.
You haven't (yet) convinced me on this. I think you're taking his language a
bit too literally. Is there anything other than that quote from chapter 5 on
which to base this conflation of appearance/reality and mysticism in Pirsig?
I see the logical point you're making, I'm just not sure that Pirsig is
guilty of it. Then again, he is open to variable interpretations!
Cheers
Sam
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