John said to Dave T:
... I believe the answer is in the Copleston Annotations, which illustrate the
issues you raise nicely. Pirsig ends up there embracing Bradley and Absolute
Idealism ...
dmb says:
No, actually Pirsig ends up embracing Bradley because Bradley is a mystic. Here
is Pirsig's statement in a fuller context:
As was stated in ZMM there was a time many years ago when I looked through the
pantheon of philosophers for resemblances to the MOQ. Since Bradley was always
classified as an idealist, it did not seem important to investigate him
thoroughly because the MOQ rejects the metaphysical assertion that the
fundamental reality of the world is idea.
But the description of Bradley as an idealist is completely incorrect.
Bradley’s fundamental assertion is that the reality of the world is
intellectually unknowable, and that defines him as a mystic.
So It has really been a shock to see how close Bradley is to the MOQ. Both he
and the MOQ are expressing what Aldous Huxley called "The Perennial
Philosophy," which is perennial, I believe, because it happens to be true.
Bradley has given an excellent description of what the MOQ calls Dynamic
Quality and an excellent rational justification for its intellectual
acceptance. It and the MOQ can be spliced together with no difficulty into a
broader explanation of the same thing.
A singular difference is that the MOQ says the Absolute is of value, a point
Bradley may have thought so obvious it didn't need mentioning. The MOQ says
that this value is not a property of the Absolute, it is the Absolute itself,
and is a much better name for the Absolute than "Absolute." Rhetorically, the
word "absolute" conveys nothing except rigidity and permanence and
authoritarianism and remoteness. "Quality," on the other hand conveys
flexibility, impermanence, here-and-now-ness and freedom. And it is a word
everyone knows and loves and understands—even butcher shops that take pride in
their product. Beyond that the term, “value,” paves the way for an
explanation of evolution that did not occur to Bradley. He apparently avoided
discussing the world of appearances except to emphasize the need to transcend
it. The MOQ returns to this world of appearances and shows how to understand
these appearances in a more constructive way.
dmb continues:
See? He's saying he rejects idealism and didn't investigate Bradley because he
was labeled an idealist. But Pirsig is surprised to find in Copleston's text a
description of Bradley's position that makes him a mystic who's giving
expression to the perennial philosophy. Bradley is close to the MOQ but NOT
because he is an Absolute Idealist. He rejects the notion that the world is
idea as well as the rigidity and authoritarianism of idealism, but that's not
what he finds in Bradley so he doesn't see those reasons to reject it.
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