MOQers: This is my third attempt to post this message. Apologies if duplicates show up.
> dmb said to Bo: > It seems to me that you must be suffering from a very odd definition of > "metaphysics" and "intellect". You seem to think the MOQ is reality itself > rather than words about reality and so you are altering the MOQ so that it is > construed as essentialism rather than philosophical mysticism, which is a > vigorous form of anti-essentialism. > > Bo replied: > Yes if that is essentialism I'm very much so, but because DQ is part and > parcel of the MOQ I wonder how you avoid being a Quality essentialist too ... > without resorting to the Quality//DQ/SQ variety that even Pirsig finally had > to abandon. > > dmb says: > Pirsig's Quality is opposed to Plato's Quality precisely because it is not an > essence. We can find this anti-essentialist move in what I take to be the > philosophical and dramatic climaxes of ZAMM.... > > But why? Phædrus wondered. Why destroy areté? And no sooner had he asked the > question than the answer came to him. Plato hadn't tried to destroy areté. He > had encapsulated it; made a permanent, fixed Idea out of it; had converted it > to a rigid, immobile Immortal Truth. He made areté the Good, the highest > form, the highest Idea of all. It was subordinate only to Truth itself, in a > synthesis of all that had gone before. > > That was why the Quality that Phædrus had arrived at in the classroom had > seemed so close to Plato's Good. Plato's Good was taken from the > rhetoricians. Phædrus searched, but could find no previous cosmologists who > had talked about the Good. That was from the Sophists. The difference was > that Plato's Good was a fixed and eternal and unmoving 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, ultimately unknowable in any kind of > fixed, rigid way. > > ..................... > > > What is good, Phædrus, and what is not good...need we ask anyone to tell us > these things? > > It is what he was saying months before in the classroom in Montana, a message > Plato and every dialectician since him had missed, since they all sought to > define the Good in its intellectual relation to things. But what he sees now > is how far he has come from that. He is doing the same bad things himself. > His original goal was to keep Quality undefined, but in the process of > battling against the dialecticians he has made statements, and each statement > has been a brick in a wall of definition he himself has been building around > Quality. Any attempt to develop an organized reason around an undefined > quality defeats its own purpose. The organization of the reason itself > defeats the quality. Everything he has been doing has been a fool's mission > to begin with. > > On the third day he turns a corner at an intersection of unknown streets and > his vision blanks out. When it returns he is lying on the sidewalk, people > moving around him as if he were not there. He gets up wearily and mercilessly > drives his thoughts to remember the way back to the apartment. They are > slowing down. Slowing down. This is about the time he and Chris try to find > the sellers of bunk beds for the children to sleep in. After that he does not > leave the apartment. > > He stares at the wall in a cross-legged position upon a quilted blanket on > the floor of a bedless bedroom. All bridges have been burned. There is no way > back. And now there is no way forward either. > > For three days and three nights, Phædrus stares at the wall of the bedroom, > his thoughts moving neither forward nor backward, staying only at the > instant. His wife asks if he is sick, and he does not answer. His wife > becomes angry, but Phædrus listens without responding. He is aware of what > she says but is no longer able to feel any urgency about it. Not only are his > thoughts slowing down, but his desires too. And they slow and slow, as if > gaining an imponderable mass. So heavy, so tired, but no sleep comes. He > feels like a giant, a million miles tall. He feels himself extending into the > universe with no limit. > > He begins to discard things, encumbrances that he has carried with him all > his life. He tells his wife to leave with the children, to consider > themselves separated. Fear of loathsomeness and shame disappear when his > urine flows not deliberately but naturally on the floor of the room. Fear of > pain, the pain of the martyrs is overcome when cigarettes burn not > deliberately but naturally down into his fingers until they are extinguished > by blisters formed by their own heat. His wife sees his injured hands and the > urine on the floor and calls for help. > > But before help comes, slowly, imperceptibly at first, the entire > consciousness of Phædrus begins to come apart -- to dissolve and fade away. > Then gradually he no longer wonders what will happen next. He knows what will > happen next, and tears flow for his family and for himself and for this > world. A fragment comes and lingers from an old Christian hymn, "You've got > to cross that lonesome valley." It carries him forward. "You've got to cross > it by yourself." It seems a Western hymn that belongs out in Montana. > > "No one else can cross it for you," it says. It seems to suggest something > beyond. "You've got to cross it by yourself." > > He crosses a lonesome valley, out of the mythos, and emerges as if from a > dream, seeing that his whole consciousness, the mythos, has been a dream and > no one's dream but his own, a dream he must now sustain of his own efforts. > Then even "he" disappears and only the dream of himself remains with himself > in it. > > And the Quality, the areté he has fought so hard for, has sacrificed for, has > never betrayed, but in all that time has never once understood, now makes > itself clear to him and his soul is at rest. > > dmb continues: > We see this same paradox in LILA, where Pirsig says that philosophical > mystics have historically shared, "a common belief that the fundamental > nature of reality is outside of language; that language splits things up into > parts while the true nature of reality is undivided". He says, "Historically > mystics have claimed that for a true understanding of reality metaphysics is > too 'scientific'. Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics is NAMES about > reality." He says, "The central reality of mysticism, the reality that > Phaedrus had called 'Quality' in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess > piece. Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without > definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience independent > of and prior to intellectual abstractions". > > Let me put it this way, old friend. Dynamic Quality itself is reality but the > MOQ is not reality. It is names about reality, a set of intellectual static > patterns that describe reality with definitions and concepts. Like its rival, > the MOQ is a product of that analytic knife. In other words, the > deconstructive anti-essentialist moves against SOM have to be applied to the > MOQ too. Its categories and concepts are not to be confused with the primary > empirical reality from which they are derived any more than SOM's categories > and concepts. I mean, Pirsig is consistently anti-essentialist even with > respect to his own metaphysical system. Otherwise, the MOQ would be exempted > from the art gallery analogy and the whole thing would otherwise be full of > holes. > > I think this is what gives rise to your SOLAQI. You're trying to solve > problems that don't really exist in the MOQ. The problems are a product of > your essentialist misinterpretation of the MOQ. Get rid of the essentialism > and the problems will evaporate. > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Get ideas on sharing photos from people like you. Find new ways to share. > http://www.windowslive.com/explore/photogallery/posts?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Photo_Gallery_082008 _________________________________________________________________ Get ideas on sharing photos from people like you. 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