From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Tue Jan 06 2004 - 03:43:30 GMT
Anthony,
> Ant: Barfield seems an interesting philosopher (re: the history of SOM) so
I'd certainly would like an expansion of your point concerning his treatment
of the intellect.
It's hard -- or maybe I'm just too lazy -- to do it justice without
repeating pretty much his whole book (Saving the Appearances: A Study in
Idolatry). Here's a short bit I wrote about it a while back:
[Start of bit]
[Sam asked:]> How would you understand the fourth level?
As Barfield would have, had he addressed the question. That, around 500 B.C.
in Greece (and with parallel movements in the East), consciousness started
to change from what he called "original participation", where subject and
object had not split apart, where the spirit in the trees was seen "behind"
the tree, and where totemism made sense (the social level was everything).
With the Greeks, what he calls alpha-thinking commenced, that is, thinking
about things. This requires that the things become objective, and that is
what happened, a process that didn't really become fully accomplished until
about 500 years ago, and which accomplishment made the scientific revolution
possible. So we are now in a state where the participation has gone
underground, so to speak, namely we are not conscious of it, yet it is still
there, since otherwise we couldn't be aware of anything. Or rather, our
being aware of anything is what he calls 'figuration' -- turning the
unrepresented into the represented. The future he calls 'final
participation', where we regain our connection with everything else, but as
opposed to original participation, the connection is "felt" internally, not
externally.
[End of bit] (and see also your note 127)
> Ant: It maybe not be obvious in Pirsig's work but I don't think he
overlooks that nirvana = samsara because the bottom line, in the MOQ, is
that all static patterns are essentially manifestations of Dynamic Quality.
I have mentioned this in previous posts and also briefly allude to this in
Section 5.5. of my PhD textbook where I discuss the relationship between
Nagarjuna and Pirsig.
Yes, the static patterns manifest DQ, but my objection is that Pirsig takes
this in a nominalistic way, as evidenced by his considering DQ as
"pre-intellectual", and in general seeing the intellect as covering up DQ.
This (in my opinion) bias is seen in your statement from the PhD Text
(section 5.7):
"A theme prevalent in Nishida's 'concrete logic' (as well as the MOQ and
much of Buddhist thought), is the recognition of the 'self' as just a useful
abstraction. "
I think this is Pirsig's position but it is not Nishida's (though there may
be some difference between early and late Nishida, I'm not sure). Whenever I
read "just an abstraction" I shriek "Nominalism!", which I consider the root
of SOM in its diseased form. I ask: who is abstracting, what is the
abstraction being abstracted from, and how can it happen without
transcending space and time -- in short, "an abstraction" is the same
mystery as "the self".
Why I think this is not Nishida's position is that he sees the self as a
contradictory identity, that the self is, yet is not, and the self is not,
and yet is. (From Robert Carter's "The Nothingness Beyond God: An
Introduction to the Philosophy of Nishida Kitaro", p. 69}:
"' At the base of the world,' writes Nishida 'there are neither the many nor
the one; it is a world of absolute unity, of opposites, where the many and
the one deny each other.' The present is the temporal place, or basho where
the self-contradictory past and future mutually interact. as well, 'this
contradictory identity,' in any and all of its forms, 'is the very place
where we find our self.'"
The self exists in the tension between the many and the one, or to put it in
MOQ terms, in the tension between DQ and SQ. But Pirsig denies this, calling
it a static pattern of value. Because I accept the Nishidan view and not
Pirsig's, I reject the MOQ position that the intellect is a fourth level of
SQ. Instead it should be seen as the conscious arena of DQ/SQ tension within
the human being. After all, it is by means of the intellect that we analyze,
critique and *evaluate* all other static patterns, and thus create new ones.
- Scott
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