John addressed this question: If goodness is intrinsic to reality, where does 'not-so-good' come from?
This question is answered by Royce: Evil is real and part of the good. The absolute perfection of the totality of existence includes the process of overcoming evil. The ultimate perfection of the good is realized in the struggle to overcome evil. The way I interpret in the light of the MoQ is that Good would be completely static if not for the necessity of overcoming evil. The process of overcoming evil is what makes dynamic quality dynamic. dmb says: I think Royce's view on this is different from Pirsig's. In the MOQ, evil is what happens when lower level static patterns trump higher ones. In a sense, evil is just what happens when a lower form of good replaces a higher form of good. Death, marital infidelity, faith-based beliefs are examples of the degeneration of biological, social and intellectual values respectively. One of the things that James really hated about Hegelian thought was his idea of the "slaughter bench of history" wherein the spilling of blood was deemed necessary in the progress of Absolute Mind. The ultimate perfection of the good was conceived as a process that steamrollered people and nations. It was a kind of theology, where our's is not to question why but to simply suffer and die. He was a world-class asshole, if you ask me. Personally, I tend to agree with Jung about Hegel. He was insane. Reading and writing about Hegel was one of the worst experiences I ever had. I was slightly traumatized by it. But based on what I've been able to gather, he externalized an internal psychological process so that the unfolding of Spirit or Mind was seen as an almost purely collective, historical process and that's just too bad for the actual people who suffer. It creates a sort of indifference to evil and misery. It's so cold and inhuman that it looks to me like the work of a psychopath. As I understand it, Pirsig's view that "man is the measure of all things" is approximately the opposite of Hegel or Royce. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don’t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
