Keith A. Gillette (gillette@tahc.state.tx.us)
Mon, 23 Feb 1998 10:04:26 +0100
At 1:18 PM +0000 2/11/98, Diana McPartlin wrote:
>It sounds to me like your understanding of Dynamic and static is similar
>to the understanding that I'm becoming more and more convinced of. The
>more I try to figure out what it is, the more I think that Dynamic
>Quality is just whatever seems better to us. Dynamic Quality is whatever
>is high quality and static is whatever is low quality. As you said, it's
>a circle we're all bound to. We all keep moving towards what seems
>dynamic. The Dynamic Quality acts upon our static patterns and pulls us
>forward to a higher level of understanding. And then the whole thing
>repeats.
I would take issue with your assertion that "Dynamic Quality is just
whatever seems better to us." I find this statement misleading. For
example, I have a friend for whom eating cheeseburgers "seems better" than
excercising regularly. Occasionally, I agree with her. However, I don't
think that either of those activities qualify as Dynamic Quality.
A synomym for Dynamic Quality that Pirsig introduced in "Subjects, Objects,
Data, Values" (page 17) that may be of use here. In "SODV", Pirsig calls
Dynamic Quality the "Conceptually Unknown". I like this term. It loses some
of the meanings of Dynamic (changing; patternless) Quality (good;
valuable), but it cuts to another of its significant characteristics: that
of being unknown to our intellect. To me, this is the essence of Pirsig's
Dynamic Quality.
The key to understanding Dynamic Quality as the Conceptually Unkown lies
with the realization that reality can not be fully captured by language
(i.e. understood intellectually). The reason for this is merely that
language is part of the whole of reality, and by definition a part of
something cannot be greater than the whole. So the process of intellectual
abstraction necessarily leaves out aspects of that which it describes. I
believe this is what Platt Holden means in his "Catch 32", beautifully
stated in his metaphor "Our eyes cannot completely see reality because the
eyes we use to see reality are part of the reality we're trying to see."
These left-out parts are, therefore, Conceptually Unknown, Pirsig's Dynamic
Quality. Now in one sense, the Conceptually Unknown Pirsig talks about in
"SODV" is merely the *currently* Conceptually Unknown. That is, after the
experiment, it will be known through some static scientific formula or
another and become Static Quality in his terminology. But in a larger
sense, for the reasons laid out in the previous paragraph, there will
always be parts of reality left out of our intellectual constructions of it
and those parts will be what we call Dynamic Quality. Those parts that do
fit in our intellectual constructions of things, that can/have been be
captured in static patterns, are called Static Quality.
(As an aside: It seems that in an even larger sense, *everything* can be
considered Dynamic Quality before we have 'sliced it up' into intellectual
categories. In *ZMM* chapter 19, Pirsig talks about "the Quality event", an
early notion, later formalized in *Lila* as Dynamic Quality, as being
"pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality" [chapter 9].)
With this understanding of Dynamic Quality, we see that it becomes
synonymous with the Sophist's idea of aretê, the Good. As Pirsig says in
*ZMM*, Chapter 29, "The Good was not a form of reality. It was reality
itself, ever changing, ultimately *unknowable* in any kind of fixed, rigid
way. (Italics added.) Pirsig makes the same connection between Dynamic
Quality and the *Tao* of Eastern thought in Chapter 20 of *ZMM*, where he
substitutes his term 'Quality' for 'Tao' in the *Tao te Ching*. As Alan
Watts writes on page 15 of *The Way of Zen*, the Tao (Dynamic Quality) is
"the *indefinable*, concrete 'process' of the world." (Italics added.)
So what you can *say* about Dynamic Quality is really very limited, since
it is, by "definition" that which cannot be expressed intellectually, that
which is left out of our models of the world. It is reality in its
totality, not reality as we conceptualize it. To my thinking, the notion of
Dynamic Quality is an epistemological distinction--an assertion about the
limits of intellectual understanding. Perhaps it is also the same as "Die
Ding an sich"--the "thing in itself" in Kant's terminology.
An important corollary to the the proposition that language cannot fully
capture reality is that there is no single correct intellectual
construction of the world--no single right answer (which is not the same as
there being no wrong answer ;-). Since there's no way for intellect to
abstract the process of the world in a way that expresses its totality,
there will always be multiple competing truths. We select among these
truths by noting how well they correspond to our experience of reality
(empiricism).
But back to the original issue of Dynamic Quality itself--the description
I've given above leaves out one important aspect, of course. One way in
which Pirsig's Dynamic Quality *differs* from "Die Ding an sich" and the
Tao is that it, as the name suggests, is *quality*, value, goodness, that
is, morality. Pirsig arrives at this conclusion during his famous "between
the horns" response to the dilemma of whether quality is subjective or
objective, as described in chapter 19 of *ZMM*. I believe this is an
ontological assertion--a statement about the nature of reality itself.
It's probably this aspect of Dynamic Quality that you're responding to when
you say "Dynamic Quality is just betterness", Diana. That's true enough as
far as it goes. Dynamic Quality *is* betterness in Pirsig's system--it's
"the good", but not in a conventional sense. It's not "Good" as in "Good
vs. Bad" or "Good vs. Evil" because Dynamic Quality encompasses all the
'things' that might qualify to wear those distinctions. It's Good in a
mystic sense--one that goes beyond our conceptual categories. What that
might mean, I don't know, because I've not had an "enlightenment"
experience that would open me up to the sort of non-intellectual
understanding or apprehension of reality that seems to be required to
intuit the Good in this fashion. (I'm still too much caught up in
intellectual understanding to fully appreciate what Pirsig means by 'direct
experience' of reality.) I believe, however, that this is what Pirsig is
talking about when he uses the term Dynamic Quality.
Well, I hope I haven't confused the issue any more by engaging in this
"degenerate" (chapter 5, *Lila*) activity of trying to box in Dynamic
Quality epistemologically and ontologically. I wrote this post primarily
for my own understanding, after reading Diana's statement of her conception
of Dynamic Quality and really being challenged by coming up with a
personally satisfying understanding of it (which I have yet to do). Thanks
to all who participate in this forum--the reading and thinking I've done
since joining has been very rewarding ...
Cheers,
Keith
______________________________________________________________________
gillette@tahc.state.tx.us -- <URL:http://www.detling.ml.org/gillette/>
-- post message - mailto:lilasqd@hkg.com unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu May 13 1999 - 16:42:48 CEST