Marsha had said to dmb:
And the Eastern texts (Buddhist & Vedic) that James read and reread early in a
most difficult period in his life had a profound influence on his thinking.
This investigation is documented in his biography 'William James: In the
Maelstrom of American Modernism' by Robert D. Richardson (pp. 119 &126):
Here's a list of some of the Eastern books he read:
Modern Buddhist - Alabaster
Religion des Buddha (Vol.1) - Koeppen
Le Buddhisme - Taine
Weltauffas der Buddhisten - Bastian
Brahma Somej: Four Lectures - Sen
It seems obvious that James's idea of pure experience came from these texts.
dmb says:
Richardson is an excellent intellectual biographer. He not only read everything
James ever wrote, including personal letters, he also read everything that
James read. (I used him extensively in my thesis.) Richardson also wrote a big
fat biography of Emerson, James's godfather. Emerson was also heavily
influenced by Eastern thinking. (Pirsig brought a copy at Emerson's home,
signed it and sent it to me as a gift.)
Marsha:
Yes, I enjoyed the book too.
dmb continues:
But more to the point. If James's central ideas, the one's that Pirsig
identifies with, are so heavily influenced by Buddhism, why do you try to use
Buddhism against James?
Marsha:
I haven't used Buddhism against James.
dmb ontinues:
Wouldn't this fact only make it all the more likely that he'd be similar to
Pirisg. Aren't they both American pragmatists with a big Zen influence?
Doesn't just make sense that you should give a bunny's butt what he thinks?
Marsha:
RMP is an American, and I'm sure he's often pragmatic, I will remind you that
in 'A Brief Summary of the MOQ' , which he wrote in October 2005 he clearly
states that the MoQ is not intended to be within any philosophic tradition. He
didn't state an exception for American Pragmatism. Here's what he wrote:
"The Metaphysics of Quality is not intended to be within any philosophic
tradition, although obviously it was not written in a vacuum. ... The
Metaphysics of Quality's central idea that the world is nothing but value is
not part of any philosophic tradition that I know of. I have proposed it
because it seems to me that when you look into it carefully it makes more sense
than all the other things the world is supposed to be composed of. One
particular strength lies in its applicability to quantum physics, where
substance has been dismissed but nothing except arcane mathematical formulae
has really replaced it. "
dmb:
Being a James hater just doesn't make any sense to me.
Marsha:
I do not see anything that I wrote that would lead you to this conclusion. I
am very impressed by that William James recognized the wisdom in the Eastern
texts enough to borrow, adapt and paraphrase to present as an American version
to his Harvard colleagues. I bet back in his day most thought the Eastern
cultures were intellectually primitive.
dmb: I know of at least two different scholars who describe the Buddha
himself as a radical empiricist, which is exactly what James, Dewey and Pirsig
call themselves.
Marsha:
Oh right, your "I know of at least one scholar..." has now turned into two
unnamed sources. If you could justify the Buddha being a radical empiricist,
he would have been one a few millennia before William James was born. By the
way, I've heard at least one scholar call James's pragmatism a type of
interest-relativism. I think without RPM's evolutionary, hierarchical,
four-level category structure for patterns, James's pragmatism is a type of
interest-relativism.
dmb:
Why embrace some and reject the others? It's silly.
Marsha:
I would never reject being pragmatic.
dmb:
Are you suggesting that James was not an original thinker in his own right? Is
that your point? No serious person could believe that. Just ask Richardson.
Marsha:
I never suggested he wasn't an original thinker.
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