From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Oct 23 2004 - 23:52:07 BST
Matt said:
At this point, I can give a small suggestion about Sam's second question: is
Pirsig consistently non-SOM? I would simply point out that in ZMM, he
attempted to attain a balance between Phaedrus (who was "a Platonist by
temperament") and the narrator (who was "pretty much Aristotelian in this
sense"), but Part IV of the book centers almost entirely on Phaedrus'
Platonic obessions. The end of the book sees the Platonic Phaedrus
triumphing psychically over the narrator and in Lila, of course, there is no
narrator, only Phaedrus. I think Pirsig's mistake was to gradually
overemphasize his theoretical obsessions in place of his practical
aspirations and this plays out thematically in his books and particularly in
his creation of a systematic, wholly general "Metaphysics of Quality".
dmb says:
Sorry, but I really don't see what answer this is supposed to suggest. Is
Pirsig consistent or not? More importantly, I think you're misreading
"Phaedrus' Platonic obsession" in a fairly disasterous way. Take a look at
the quote from which your assertion is derived. And then look at some
related quotes that help flesh out its meaning...
"Plato is the eternal Buddha-seeker who appears again and again in each
generaton, moving onward and upward toward the 'one'. Aristotle is the
eternal motorcycle mechanic who prefers the 'many'. I myself am pretty much
Aristotelian in this sense, preferring to find the Buddha in the quality of
the facts around me, but Phaedrus was clearly a Platonist by temperment and
when the classes shifted to Plato he was greatly relieved. His Quality and
Plato's good were so similar that if it hadn't been for some notes Phaedrus
left I might have thought they were identical." ZAMM p.331-2
"The difference was that Plato's Good was a fixed and eternal and unvoving
idea, whereas for the rhetoricians it was not an idea at all. The Good was
not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, and ultimately
unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way." ZAMM p.342
"Philosophical mysticism, the idea that truth is indefinable and can be
apprehended only by non-rational means, has been with us since the beginning
of history." ZAMM p.207
"I want to say in brief, that the ultimate journey taken by Phaedrus and
described by the narrator was the MYSTICAL self, ...Mysticism is always
associated with some sort of unitive consciousnsness, a consciousness
experientially united with ultimate reality." Guidebook to ZAMM p.26
dmb continues:
See what I'm getting at? Plato was not a theoretical speculator, he was a
philosophical mystic who tried to nail down DQ. Plato's hatred of the
rhetoriticians (the sophists) did not come from there refusal to violate the
ineffability of the mystical reality so much as from their inability to
explain what the hell they were doing even though many of thenm could
provide a mystical experience for their "customers". Plato took his Good
from them. He was trying to get a handle on the Dynamic, on the mystical
reality. So, to take him merely as a speculative generalist is to misread
his essential message. And consequently Pirsig's message too. Seriously. One
cannot exclude mysticism from Pirsig's thinking and still expect to retain
anything resembling the MOQ. Its just too central to everthing. In many
ways, the books begin and end in that teepee. Even for Plato. And one of the
most objectable things about SOM is that such things aren't even on the
table.
The Chairman had taken over the class by the time they were reading Plato's
"Phaedrus". A "false note" creeps in and our Phaedrus notices that "the
Chairman has completely bypassed Socrates' description of the One and has
jumped ahead". I'd suggest that materialist and literalist, even smart ones
like the Chairman, have been mis-reading Plato in this way for a long, long
time. As I understand it, the mysticism in Plato and in the ancient world in
general, has by-passed and overlooked by MOST philosophers. There are lots
of reasons for that, the invention of substance not being least among them,
but its still a profound mis-reading of Pirsig's work.
It seems to me that the two temperments are resovled in the MOQ, with its
static/Dynamic split, where Buddha is both the many and the One.
And if we're looking for the roots of the metaphysics of substance, I'd
suggest that Aristotle is the main crank.
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