Ant,
On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 2:31 PM, Ant McWatt <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Ant McWatt comments: > > Well, sort of John. Pirsig was making his assessment about F.H. Bradley > ONLY from those Copleston notes on Idealism found at: > > robertpirsig.org/Copleston.htm (for anyone out there wondering where > these can be read!). > > It's worth keeping in mind that Pirsig never read Bradley's texts or > papers. J: That little section alone would hardly qualify as an unqualified endorsement of Bradley but when taken in the context of most of his commentary in the Annotations I find it significant. Also, it's not merely what Pirsig says about Bradley but the way he says it: RMP: 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. J: Whether Bradley's metaphysics and the MoQ could be spliced together is still an open question but at least the possibility is not dismissed out of hand as Pirsig does to many of the earlier philosophers portrayed. Ant: > If indeed Bradley was on the same tracks as the MOQ, again like Northrop, > much of his material is weighed down by "heavy" often obscure rhetoric. I > read Bradley's "Appearance and Reality" while studying for the MOQ PhD and > found it of little help. > > J: I'm impressed! Even Royce found it heavy going - "The book is itself a very elaborate argumentative structure. One ought not to make light of it by chance quotations. One cannot easily summarize its well-wrought reasonings in a few sentences. To discuss it carefully would have been wholly impossible in a general course of lectures." Stuff like that I'd definitely find a favorite interpreter to do some philosophological work for me. I've got T.L.S Sprigge's James and Bradley on order from Amazon and hope to gain insight from that. Especially since Sprigge claims that both men solve the other's biggest problems. My interest is piqued by the fact that Pirsig spoke highly of both - James extensively of course, and Bradley in passing. Ant: > However, I always enjoyed Pirsig's retort to Copleston's statement that > "The > Absolute is spirit" with the comment "There is > [a] brand of vodka called "Absolut"! > Yeah, Mr. Pirsig didn't care much for the term "spirit". It's not a well-defined term. Whenever I hear the term spirit, I think DQ. When I hear Absolut I think, "yes please, I'll have a drink". Thanks for weighing in Ant, John Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
