Oops! -- Sorry Ron, I tried to clear a technical glitch and inadvertantly posted an incomplete message.
Let's try this again... > Ham, > to simplify things for my tiny skull, I've used the >Tao te ching as a model metaphor > is this how essentialism works? > > The Tao(PRIMARY REALITY) begot one.(AWARENESS) > One begot two.(DOUBLE NEGATION) > Two begot three.(QUALITY) > And three begot the ten thousand things. [snip] > But Pirsig asserts that "value" pervades all reality and is > therefore Primary before reality(objective matter) itself, > and arranges itself accordingly, so that the tao reads as: > > The Tao(DQ) begot one.(SQ) > One begot two.(AWARENESS) > Two begot three.(S/O)(I NOT I)(DOUBLE NEGATION) > And three begot the ten thousand things. [snip] > using this as a reference point, am I even close to understanding > Essentialism? > thanks, I'm very interested in getting this right. I don't disparage anyone's belief system or the canons that support it. But for me these pretty verses are euphemisms that may serve as mood music for the soul but offer little in the way of metaphysical clarity. I'm a literalist trying to make sense of philosophy in plain, though sometimes strained, English. I've borrowed a few terms from mysticism -- "Oneness", for example -- but, frankly, I don't even know if mystics claim to have an ontology. To get Essentialism "right", you start as the nihilist does by contemplating Nothingness, and you realize two things rather quickly: it's unimaginable, and it can't lead to anything. At that point you can either "give up" and say "all is vanity", or you can conclude, as I did, that the ultimate source of all things is the antithesis of nothingness -- absolute "IS-ness" -- the necessary primary source which I call Essence. That's the first step; but, unfortunately, it's too big a hurdle for most people, even for the gifted author of the MoQ who decided that metaphysics would destroy his poetry (still essentially mystical) and -- even worse -- take us back to religion and supernaturalism. The rest of ontology is the ongoing process of figuring out how we get from Oneness to diversity, and vice-versa. After seven decades of figuring, and with some insight borrowed from visionaries such as Nicholas of Cusa, I've arrived at a hypothesis that satisfies me but, obviously, hasn't yet led to a world-wide epiphany. Here's a simple paradigm, Ron; and I'll even put it in Tao prose: ESSENCE (PRIMARY ONENESS) negates NOTHINGNESS. NOTHINGNESS begets two (AWARENESS and OTHERNESS). AWARENESS is bound to OTHERNESS by VALUE. INTELLECTION negates VALUE to beget BEING-AWARE. BEING-AWARE begets the ten thousand EXPERIENCES of the ten thousand things. P.S. At the end of the ten thousand EXPERIENCES, OTHERNESS, INTELLECTION, and BEING return to NOTHINGNESS, and VALUE is restored to the ONENESS of ESSENCE. If you want a more detailed ontology (in English prose), you'll have to read my thesis at www.essentialism.net/mechanic.htm . Essentially yours, Ham 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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
