From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Apr 17 2004 - 22:58:38 BST
DaveStorey and all philosophers:
Dave S said hello:
Greetings all, I am new to the discussion ring, so excuse my eruption. I am
currently a senior philosophy major at BC, about to enter a PhD program at
Fordham (i know, philosophology beware!); rest assured, i'm not an SOM
acolyte
nor a Catholic devotee--the system has treated me well and opened up doors
that a secular insittution believes no longer exists. I read ZEN about a
year
ago, and Lila several weeks ago.
dmb says:
Daves of the world unite! When this kind of background is added a fondness
for Ken Wilber, well, let's just say I'm very much looking forward to your
contributions. Welcome.
Dave S.
I am confident that, barring some slight conflations and underdeveloped
aspets, the MOQ is, ...nothing less than the revival of metaphysics, which
overleaps all the "second-order" questions of 20th century philosophy (aside
from montrous playtpi, i'm talking about linguistic theory, deconstruction,
etc.), or, more correctly, it situates them in a larger framework; it
reveals the pragmatic value of such disciplines, but shows their utter
partiality.
dmb says:
Yep. I only you'd said that a year ago and spent the last 12 months
elaborating on these points. There's a guy that just won't here it from me,
but who very much needs to hear it.
Dave S continued:
Pirsig picks up and adumbrates a lot of crucial philosophers who have been
neglected in the western tradition, or rather, who have not been highlighted
enough (the process theorists, bergson, whitehead, and most importantly,
Schelling,); the point is that all of these theorists i just mentioned
either presupposed, demanded, or elucidated a theory of emergent evolution,
something Darwinian natural selection could never brook.
dmb says:
Right. He's taken up the mystic's cause too. The Western tradition has done
worse than ignore mysticism. Its openly hostile to it. I think we can also
see the perrenial philosophy skectched out in the MOQ and then there is
Pirsig's line of thought about "the oldest idea known to man". And I
certainly wouldn't be surprized to learn of other such broadly inclusive
moves, ones that I haven't yet noticed. This is one of my favorite things
about Pirsig; he has a way of digging up lost treasure.
Dave S asked:
I must say I was struck, reading Pirsig's system, by it's undeniable
similarity to another contemporary thinker whom i've studied in depth, and
who
is likewise scoffed at and ignored by mainstream academia...which brings me
to
my reason for writing: Have any of you ever heard of Ken Wilber?
dmb says:
Yes. I have a small stack of his books and once I was even lucky enough to
bump into him at a concert. I also think the similarity between Wilber and
Pirsig is undeniable. It really is quite striking.
Dave S wrote:
He's an indepdent thinker, written about 20 books, raised holy hell from
berkeley to boulder, and detailed a pretty awesome theory of evolutionary
metaphysics which bears amazingly close resemblance to the MOQ. They also
recognize the cruciality of mysticism (Wilber's theory is, in my opinion,
superior to Pirsig's, because it more clearly differentiates the levels of
value, in an impressive framework called the four quadrants, which charts
the
evolution of consciousness from matter to life to mind to spirit) If you
like
Pirsiq, Wilber will blow your mind. I am very interested to try and
discern
whether either pirgiq or Wilber had knowledge of or influence on each other.
Do any of you know or communicate with Pirsiq directly? I'd be interested.
dmb says:
I vaguely remember asking him about Pirsig and vaguely recall that Wilber
said he was not familiar with him. But that was nearly ten years ago, that
that may no longer be true. Or I could have dreamed the whole thing...
As I understand it, Wilber and Pirsig are saying basically the same thing,
but Wilber goes into much greater detail. (Since he's published ten times
the number of books, this should surprize no one.) The similarity between
them works well here, I think, because Wilber's detailed explanations only
serve to flesh-out and clarify what Pirsig saying.
I like to think that its a little like the binocular vision required for
depth perception. Two slightly different angles of view give us a better fix
on the thing.
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Apr 17 2004 - 23:10:32 BST