On Tuesday, 9/06/11 at 5:14 PM, "MarshaV" <val...@att.net> wrote.
Hello Ham,
Ron is clinging to a silly, little boy's notion of illusion for his own
purposes. Here's Ms. Albahari's short, but formal definition:
"When X purports (through a medium of appearance) to exist
in manner F, to person P, X-as-F is illusory when X does not
really exist in manner F."
She explains "Most generally, an illusion involves a conflict between
appearance and reality. Sometimes, X, appears to be the case,
but there is something about S that does not reflect reality' it
MISLEADS the person to whom it appears. In other words,
X PURPORTS, through the appearance, to exist in a particular
manner, than X does NOT REALLY exist in the purported manner."
Albahari seems to be saying that what we experience is a "distortion" or
misrepresentation of what is real. This is obviously true. We know that
things are not what they appear to be. Parmenides explained the "world of
appearances", in which one's sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are
false and deceitful. This inspired Plato to theorize that things were
really "essences" that we couldn't know, until Kant came along and described
physical reality as "things-in-themselves". Later, Bishop Berkeley
undertook to prove that there is no such thing as matter at all, that the
world consists of nothing but "minds and their ideas". (Pirsig's MoQ
basically converts this self/other dualism to Quality and its patterns.)
Then Kierkegaard extended Christology to the philosophical view that reality
cannot be fully comprehended by reason because human existence is always
involved in choices that are absurd from a rational viewpoint. He conceived
of each person as a unique human being responsible for his/her own actions,
which implies that one's existence creates one's essence, turning
metaphysics upside down and sparking a new movment called Existentialism.
Kierkegaard's concepts were developed in the 20th century by Martin
Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Gabriel Marcel.
In my opinion, Parmenides had it right in the first place. We do live in a
world of appearances where being is presented finitely to the senses as
differentiated phenomena and interpreted intellectually as existential
reality. But existence is a co-dependent reality whose primary
contingencies are Sensibility and Otherness. It cannot be reduced to a
monism, nor can it exclude subjective awareness. Existence is the
actualized ("particularized", if you will) mode of the essential Whole which
transcends it. That Whole is uncreated, absolute, undifferentiated, and
immutable.
There you have 'Essentialism in a nutshell'. Pirsig would say it's
metaphysics by a 'nut case', but I'm not discouraged. I don't have all the
answers, nor do I ever expect to. But the worldview I have managed to
garner from the wisdom of philosophy serves me well and convinces me that
Value is my inextricable connection with Essence.
I only wish that conviction could be imparted to the nihilists in this
comunity.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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