From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Jan 30 2005 - 20:15:12 GMT
Sam, Scott, Paul, all:
Scott said to Paul:
...the main point is that "static patterns block the direct perception of
DQ" is in the same mold as Kant's "the human conceptual structure blocks
perception of the real-in-itself". With the difference that the MOQ holds
that the block is removable, while Kant thinks it isn't.
Sam added:
And the tradition descending via Schleiermacher and James says that it is
removable too - and accessible via "feeling" in Schleiermacher, "pure
experience" in James, the "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" in
Northrop - and DQ in Pirsig.
dmb says:
Pirsig's mysticism is descended from Plato and Plotinus, from the East, from
Native American mysticism, but not from the Modern Romantics. I think that
its much better, much more accurate and coherent, to see the battle between
the Kantians and the Romantics as a battle where both sides share the same
metaphysical assumptions, as a battle that takes place within SOM. (Pirsig
abandons the classic/romantic split, as if to tell us how easy it is to be
fooled by this rivalry.) With some help from Roger Walsh I'd like to try to
show the difference between subjective experiece and the mystical
experience. (I never heard of Walsh until yesterday, so don't ask.) I posted
a big chunk of his work in the "pesky prags" thread, but now I'll use it
much more selectively and, hopefully, add some useful comments. For
starters, here's where he gets to the appearance/reality distinction
(subjectivity in relation to the world) and even identifies it as
Modernity's central problem...
"This worldview presented philosophers with a problem, the so-called central
problem of modernity: namely the nature of human subjectivity and its
relation to the world. The rational ego might say it was merely a strand in
the great web of life, but that reduced the subjective to the
empirical--reduced the left- to the right-hand quadrants. Now the question
of the good life was whether to seek either autonomous agency of the
rational ego generating its own morals and aspirations separate from the
brute drives of nature, or on the other hand to seek communion with the
natural world by connecting and communing with nature including its vital,
sensual and sexual elements. This tension Wilber refers to as the conflict
between the ego camp and the eco camp."
dmb says:
The rational ego is what we'd call the classical side while the nature
lovers represent the romantic side. And we can see that Kant and
Schleiermacher line up in those two camps. The beatnicks and hippies opposed
the square suits for the same reason. The myth of the noble savage is fuled
by the same romanitic vision. Round and round it goes until SOM is
abandoned. Pirsig is able to escape this trap by looking outside the West,
and by directly attacking its assumptions. In the MOQ, substance and self
are not the essential features of reality, they are limited assumptions.
Walsh gets to Kant here, but I should add that he's using ego and eco to
describe these two camps...
"Immanuel Kant is the exemplar of the ego camp. For him the rational ego,
the
moral subject, is free only to the degree he or she disengages from the
pulls of egocentric desire and of lower social forces, and becomes
effectively autonomous. Thus arose the subjective part of the enlightenment
paradigm, the so-called self-defining subject, the autonomous ego,
disengaged self, philosophy of the subject, or self-sufficient
subjectivity."
dmb says:
The autonomous ego, the subjective self. This is certainly one of the most
central ideas in SOM and it is one that Pirsig describes as a ridiculous
fiction. That isolated, lonely self behind the eyeballs, the one that can
never really know the world or anyone else. For SOMers all questions revolve
around this, all experience revolves around this. But the MOQ rejects all
that and the subjective self is secondary. Here Walsh gets to the
romantics...
"The eco camp on the other hand felt, quite reasonably, that this paradigm
of
knowledge left the subject split from and alien, monochromatic world. The
eco camp therefore argued for a return to nature so that the "living
sources" of human existence could be recontacted and renewed. Consequently
the appropriate mode of knowing was held to be not disinterested thought but
powerful feeling, and the best means of expression and enhancing
participation with nature were felt to be poetry and art."
dmb says:
Is that what Pirsig is talking about? A return to nature and a reliance on
powerful feelings? I understand that some posters might think so, but I
don't. Not at all. I think he dondemns the hippies and romantics and the
myth of the noble savage for being degenerate, for undermining social and
intellectual quality with that emotional back-to-nature stuff. And so do all
my favorite philosophical mystics...
"The problem for the eco camp was just how to insert the self back into the
stream of life without losing the benefits of reason. This proved
particularly problematic since these thinkers tended to confuse
differentiation and dissociation. Thus the developmental and evolutionary
differentiation of the prerational fusion of self and world was seen not as
a necessary development phase allowing subsequent higher order
integration--but rather as a pathological process leading to paradise lost."
dmb says:
Pirsig describes this differentiation in terms of the intellect fighting for
independence from the social level, which is a good thing. And the
disassociation is described in terms of amoral objectivity, value-free
science and all the other problems that came in the wake of the intellect's
birth and independence. And instead of seeing the two levels as forever
hostile and mutually exclusive, he wants to re-integarte them within a
larger framwork, which is described above as a "higher order integration".
And the task is to re-examine the social level, to grow up and learn to
appreciate all your parents did to make life easy without accepting or
rejecting anything blindly. The more basic levels, society and nature are
seen as quality too, but romanitic confusions are relieved by putting all
these levels of quality into a hierarchy. Here's a little more about the
Schliermacher of the world...
"...The eco camp, however, sought freedom from excessive objectivity,
autonomy and instrumentality. However, it ended up overvaluing emotional,
irrational impulses and effectively saw nature as the source of sentiment
rather than as the embodiment of Spirit as had Plato and Plotinus."
dmb says:
The embodiment of spirit rather than the source of subjective feelings.
Exactly. I think the idea in the MOQ is that all the static forms are an
expression of DQ, a limited reflection or a finite inflection of DQ. This is
where the idea of a cosmic order comes in, the idea that static forms are
held together in various ways but never in such a way that it defies the
underlying DQ. SQ embodies DQ, gives form to the formless.
I don't have a bunch of ribbons and bows to wrap up all this stuff. I just
wanted to sketch out a very brief history, provide an outline of the context
in which Shleilmacher was reacting to Kant. And I think it was a battle
within the confines of SOM. Both sides are working with assumptions that
Pirsig and other contemporary philosophical mystics attack directly and
reject explicitly.
thanks,
dmb
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