Hi Jason and Group:

Glad you brought up Schopenhauer because he's one of my favorite 
philosophers. I like him because, to quote Will Durant , "He saw that the 
ultimate good is beauty, and that ultimate joy lies in creating and 
cherishing the beautiful." 

Jason wrote:
 
> First, It seems that Schopenhauer has described the will as the ultimate and highest 
>force in the world.  Will is even higher up on a scale of "value" than intellect.  
>Now I realize that Schopenhauer's Will, which is, drives like hunger, and sex would 
>be biological quality in the MoQ.  But 
Schopenhauer also associates instinct with these drives.  My problem is that I have 
always thought of instinct as associated with quality, or pure being like in Zen.  
Schopenhauer says that the intellect divides, but tha
> Thank you,

To me Schopenhauer's Will is not limited to biological quality but is rather 
more inclusive, like Dynamic Quality itself--"the free force of life, the 
source of all things, completely simple and always new." As such, you 
can correctly I think call it an "instinct," whether an instinct for survival or 
an instinct for happiness, humor, freedom, perfection, beauty, or "pure 
being."  

Or, you can call Will "dharma," the principle of rightness "which gives 
structure and purpose to the evolution of all life and to the evolving 
understanding of the universe which life has created."

In other words, Jason, I see Schopenhauer's Will to be synonymous with 
Pirsig's Dynamic Quality--"the ultimate and highest force in the world."

Platt
   
 









MOQ Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/

Reply via email to