Donald T Palmgren (lonewolf@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)
Wed, 25 Feb 1998 05:48:27 +0100
On Tue, 24 Feb 1998, Jason Gaedtke wrote:
> I think that the sacrifice that we as a
> group
> have made in advancing a collective "understanding" of Pirsig's thought
> has
> been our open-mindedness.
Could be. Personally I see this -ism partisianship as a result
of
the Church of Reason -- the school system we are all churned through as
if
it were some great sassage machine -- *programing* us to see a question
as
an unfinished answer, a blank to be filled in, either correctly or
incorectly. I'm frequently told by people who insist that Good is more
real that Truth that what I say is false. (I fear they miss the irony.)
Perhaps idealistically I hoped that Pirsig supporters would be raving
individualist and radically iconoclastic -- like the man himself, but I
sense a desire to found a church in his wake (and the man not yet dead).
Oh well. (Has anyone beside me thought that insted of "Principals"
maybe we should have "pointers" or "guidelines" or "prefatory thoughts"
or
something?)
> PS
> Donald, would you be willing to share a few of the specific points that
> you
> alluded to earlier in which Hegelian and/or Kantian philosophy proved
> superior
> to Pirsig's?
>
(Thanks for your words Jason. Much appriciated.)
I don't infact feel as implyed above. I know little of Kant, I
admit. I think he's worth exploring because it is by-and-large quite
true
(Good? Well, true.) that everything that's been said since Kant was
implicit (if not explicit) in his system somewhere -- and it depends on
what you emphacize. You might say he embodies S-O thinking, or that he
foundes his phil. on suposed absolute truths, or you could say he posits
a
trans-spacio-temporal entity out of which arises experience, which is
the
bumping together of S and O but is itself neither, or that Kant put
limits
on Reason to show how we in fact know nothing for certain / how it
"really" is. Even radical iconoclast like Derida have acknowledged their
debt to the Big K.
That dosn't mean he's the best. (Pirsig is much better; trust
me.)
Now Hegel I am strongly influenced by, and I'd be happy to say
some things about him. Again, I don't personaly have any strong partison
feelings for Hegel, or the need to stand up and say, "Hegelinism rules!"
and then set my pike to recieve a charge. My philosophy in a nutshell
(argued at greater length in my in-progress "Saussage Machine" paper)
is:
A real, open question (not just a school-question) is something that
puts
thought in motion; once so, the goal is to keep it going (dynamically?)
and not stop it w/ some simple or caned answer. That's why I primarily
try
to raise questions and have (believe it or not) thus avoided saying much
about where "I stand." (More on standing when we see Hegel.)
Now, on w/ Kant -- at breakneck speed:
We've seen that Kant turns traditional metaphysics -- where s-t
are formed by way of objects -- on its head when he says that objects
are
formed through s-t -- that s-t is the form of experience, the
phonouminal
world, but this is caused by a nouminal "world" (laking s-t the word
hardly seems to apply).
2) The Transendental Analytic
Knowledge results from the coming together of two faculties:
Reason and Sensability -- intuition w/o concepts is empty, concepts w/o
intuition are sensless. Only through their cooperation is experience
possible. And "experience" means s-t experience. (Don't psychologize
Kant
here. We all start w/ this sort of Cartisan solipsism in the back of our
minds and bring that to Kant, but that's not what he's getting at.)
There is a unity of exp. that is the unity of s-t. (This is
where
Hiddeger says that the Trancendental Unity is time's self-consciousness:
the (known)object's awarness of itself as a (knowing)subject.) The
trancendental unity (TU) is the skyhook from which German Idealism
dangles. It sits opposed to the "manifold of experience" -- the apparent
seperatness of this-that, I-other, here-there, now-then (SOM). So,
figures
Kant, there must be a priori (intuative) principals that make this unity
possible, since you can't get it through exp. (which is *necessarily*
s-t
and S-O exp.).
Kant's second formulation of the Noumina is: The thing in itself
is the object of a possible creative intuition (OoaPCI). (Confused?)
Since an entity is what it does, the OoaPCI and the subject are
the same -- the O doesn't have that otherness still present in
formulation
1.
Frequently the example given for a/the OoaPCI (NOTE: Be
suspicious
whenever you here "for example." Is Jesus an example of a savior? That's
like praying: "To Whome it May Concern..." "Example" always tryes to
flip
us up onto the timless realm of Truth I call "The Liturary Plane.") is
God
creating the world: First there is nothing. Then God thinks "I exist," a
ZAP! S and O, knower and known, come into being. Then God thinks of the
world and ZAP! t-s exist. Man, ZAP! Man.
("Out of the one come forth the two.
Out of the two come forth the three.
Out of the three come forth the manifold of things."
Isn't that the Tao te Jing? Yes.)
Now that's the standerd example (be suspicious) of a/the OoaPCI.
What a lot of Kant scholers miss (so I understand) is that ther's
another
way to think of this, and that is where Hegel comes in.
But this is long enough. So, next time: Wrap up Kant and unvale
the last two formulations of the Noumina, and the transition to Hegel,
in
whome we will encounter a staggering alternitive to the Church of
Reason.
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
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