Marsha said:
Lately I've been thinking about RMP's adamant statement that between ZMM and
LILA, LILA is the more important book. Why? What is the most profound
difference? It is the transformation from Classical/Romantic to
Dynamic/static. In leaving behind the literary-historical terms "romantic" and
"classical" the emphasis has transformed from one of form to affect.
The Dynamic/static represents the affect, the experience, the intensity in the
response, regardless of the form. Am I making sense?
dmb says:
Lila is more philosophically serious and explicit than ZAMM. Pirsig wrote it,
he said, because one "can't have a metaphysics that consists of just one word."
Actually, he was already switching from classic and romantic to static and
dynamic within the pages of ZAMM. He realized at a certain point that classic
and romantic are both static, they are both intellectual, that they are
different styles of thought. When forced to choose between romantic Platonism
(Phaedrus) and classical Aristotelianism (the Narrator), Pirsig sides with the
Sophists, with Protagoras! And this distinction is not just literary, it's also
about rival metaphysical stances.
"As we survey the history of metaphysics we soon realize that two pretty
distinct types of mind have filled it with their warfare. Let us call them the
rationalist and the empiricist types of mind. A saying of Coleridge's is often
quoted [Pirsig being one such quoter], to the effect that every one is born
either a platonist or an aristotelian. By aristotelian, he means empiricist,
and by platonist, he means rationalist; but... both of them were rationalists
as compared with the kind of empiricism which Democritus and Protagoras
developed; and Coleridge had better have taken either of those names instead of
Aristotle as his empiricist example."
Clearly, this is the same clash of temperaments we find built right into the
structure of Pirsig's first novel. And the main idea is to fuse the two thought
styles, He says his central aim is to show how "rationality can be tremendously
improved, expanded and made far more effective through a formal recognition of
Quality in its operation." (ZAMM 278) That's where "affect" comes in. It's not
just a new philosophy, he says, it's "even broader than that - new form of
spiritual RATIONALITY". (ZAMM 358, emphasis is Pirsig's) "He did nothing for
Quality or the Tao. What benefited was reason." (ZAMM 257)
"Reason and Quality had become separated and in conflict with each other" (358)
back in the days of Plato. "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", Pirsig says, but now it's time
for "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." (ZAMM 294)
In Lila, then we find the nuts and bolts of what it means to make reason
subordinate to Quality instead of the other way around. "Truth is a species of
the good," James and Pirsig say together. They both want thought to serve life
and not the other way around. Our ideas are derived from the immediate flux of
life and they are useful and true only to the extent that they are successfully
"set to work within the ongoing stream of experience", as James puts it. And if
our philosophies are going to be the servants of life, then what hope is there
unless we're willing to "admit that all our 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 divining power?" In other words,
our philosophies cannot be very true unless they take account of human values
and interests. What kind of empiricist can rightly
exclude the most ubiquitous and salient feature of our experiences as they
actually lived and felt? Not a radical empiricist, that's for sure.
>
>
>
> On Mar 6, 2011, at 10:17 AM, ADRIE KINTZIGER wrote:
>
> > I was thinking this morning that Ham's point-of-view seems confined to and
> > represents the Intellectual Level, but that would be still within the MoQ.
> >
> > Showing that the individual level needs more attention than is deserved
> > until now,but i agree that Ham's line of reasoning will find itself always
> > at the
> > intellectual level, not above it.
> > It is an impossibility to outstep the arch of morality with the proposals
> > he made.
> >
> > 2011/3/6 MarshaV <[email protected]>
> >
> >>
> >> Hello Andre,
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mar 6, 2011, at 8:24 AM, Andre Broersen wrote:
> >>
> >>> Marsha to Andre:
> >>>
> >>> Right, and Buddhism is pragmatic and is based on a radical empiricism
> >> too. My concern is confining the MoQ to the Jamesian tradition.
> >>>
> >>> Andre:
> >>> No such 'confining' intended Marsha. I should also say that in both ZMM
> >> and LILA, Pirsig has referred more to Taoism and (Zen)Buddhism than to the
> >> Jamesian tradition. I assume Ham has read both books. I used the quote
> >> because I am not sure to what extent Ham is impressed by having his
> >> Essentialist convictions refuted or questioned based on 'mystical' Taoist/
> >> Zen Buddhist insights, despite his self-proclaimed familiarity with
> >> Pirsig's
> >> MOQ.
> >>>
> >>> Mind you, it seems to me that Ham is not impressed by anything refuting
> >> or even questioning his idea 'Essence'. Too much invested in it I guess.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Marsha:
> >> I am reminded of the book 'Nonduality' by David Loy, where he compares the
> >> Vedantic tradition against the Mahayana tradition; while the points-of-view
> >> are very, very different, the conclusions turn out to be the same. What a
> >> trick! Sooo interesting.
> >>
> >> I was thinking this morning that Ham's point-of-view seems confined to and
> >> represents the Intellectual Level, but that would be still within the MoQ.
> >> (Where else could it be?) How dangerous to demand that MoQ definitions be
> >> 'absolutely' NOT this or that. It pleases me when Mark reminds us that RMP
> >> provides analogies, not absolutes. And when John reminds us that a
> >> metaphysics consists of examining one's assumptive presumptions.
> >>
> >> Ham is totally cool! I couldn't imagine this list without him.
> >>
> >>
> >> Marsha
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ___
> >>
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> >
> >
> >
> > --
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