John said:
Since we all know what Quality is; since we all have access to the apprehension
of this fundamental guide, why is there anything wrong?
Why? Because somewhere back in ancient Greece the Good was subordinated to the
True, because the passions were denigrated and rationality was made divine. The
reasons are historical and evolutionary.
"In the past our common universe of reason has been in the process of escaping,
rejecting the romantic, irrational world of prehistoric man. It's been
necessary since before the time of Socrates to reject the passions, the
emotions, in order to free the rational mind for an understanding of nature's
order which was as yet unknown. Now it's time to further an understanding of
nature's order by reassimilating those passions which were originally fled
from. The passions, the emotions, the affective domain of man's consciousness,
are a part of nature's order too. The central part. At present we're snowed
under with an irrational expansion of blind data-gathering in the sciences
because there's no rational format for any understanding of scientific
creativity. At present we are also snowed under with a lot of stylishness in
the arts ... thin art ... because there's very little assimilation or extension
into underlying form. We have artists with no scientific knowledge and
scientists with no artistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of
gravity at all, and the result is not just bad, it is ghastly. The time for
real reunification of art and technology is really long overdue." (ZAMM p. 294)
“…, the one fundamental quarrel Empiricism has with Absolutism is over this
repudiation by Absolutism of the personal and aesthetic factor in the
construction of philosophy. That we all of us have feelings, Empiricism feels
quite sure. That they may be as prophetic and anticipatory of as anything else
we have, and some of them more so than others, can not possibly be denied. But
what hope is there if squaring and settling opinions unless Absolutism will old
parley on this common ground; and will admit that all philosophies are
hypotheses, to which all our faculties, emotional as well as logical help us,
and the truest of which will at the final integration of things be found in
possession of the men whose faculties on the whole had the best diving power?
(William James, “Absolutism and Empiricism” p.96)
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