“Mysticism and Logic” by Bertrand Russell, pub'd by George Allen & Unwin
Ltd., London, 1970
---The following quotes are from pages 9 to 30:
“Metaphysics, or the attempt to conceive the world as a whole by means of thought, has been developed, from the first, by the union and conflict of two very different human impulses, the one urging men towards mysticism, the other urging them towards science...
But the greatest men who have been philosophers have felt the need both of science and of mysticism: the attempt to harmonize the two was what made their life, and what always must, for all its arduous uncertainty, make philosophy, to some minds, a greater thing than either science or religion.
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[from Plato's analogy of the Cave, in the "Republic" - a must read for those interested in Phaedrus' development of ideas]:
“In the world of knowledge, the essential Form of the Good is the limit of our enquiries, and can barely be perceived; but, when perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the source of all that is bright and beautiful, - in the visible world giving birth to light and its master, and in the intellectual world dispensing, immediately and with full authority, truth and reason; - and that whosoever would act wisely, either in private or in public, must set this Form of Good before his eyes.”
But in this passage, as throughout most of Plato’s teaching, there is an identification of the good with the truly real, which became embodied in the philosophical tradition, and is still largely operative in our own day. In thus allowing a legislative function to the good, Plato produced a divorce between philosophy and science, from which, in my opinion, both have suffered ever since and are still suffereing. The man of science, whatever his hopes may be, must lay them aside while he studies nature; and the philosopher, if he is to achieve truth must do the same. Ethical considerations can only legitimately appear when the truth has been ascertained: they can and should appear as determining our feeling towards the truth, and our manner of ordering our lives in view of this truth, but not as themselves dictating what the truth is to be...
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A process which led from the amoeba to Man appeared to the philosopher to be obviously a progress - though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known. Hence the cycle of changes which science had shown to be the probable history of the past was welcomed as revealing a law of development towards good in the universe - an evolution or unfolding of an idea slowly embodying itself in the actual. But such a view, though it might satisfy Spencer and those whom we may call Hegelian evolutionists, could not be accepted as adequate by the more whole-hearted votaries of change. An ideal to which the world continuously approaches is, to these minds, too dead and static to be inspiring. Not only the aspiration, but the ideal too, must change and develop with the course of evolution: there must be no fixed goal, but a continual fashioning of fresh needs by the impulse which is life and which alone gives unity to the process.
Life, in this philosophy, is a continuous stream, in which all divisions are artificial and unreal. Separate things, beginnings and endings, are mere convenient fictions: there is only smooth unbroken transition. The beliefs of today may count as true today, if they carry us along the stream; but tomorrow they will be false, and must be replaced by new beliefs to meet the new situation. All our thinking consists of convenient fictions, imaginary congealings of the stream: reality flows on in spite of all our fictions, and though it can be lived, it cannot be conceived in thought. Somehow, without explicit statement, the assurance is slipped in that the future, though we cannot foresee it, will be better than the past or the present: the reader is like the child which expects a sweet because it has been told to open its mouth and shut its eyes. Logic, mathematics, physics disappear in this philosophy, because they are too 'static'; what is real is no impulse and movement towards a goal which, like the rainbow, recedes as we advance, and makes every place different when it reaches it from what it appeared to be at a distance.
I do not propose to enter upon a technical examination of this philosophy. I wish only to maintain that the motives and interests which inspire it are so exclusively practical, and the problems with which it deals are so special, that it can hardly be regarded as touching any oof the questions that, to my mind, constitute genuine philosophy...
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…in order to understand the ethical outlook of mysticism: there is a lower mudane kind of good and evil, which divides the world of appearance into what seem to be conflicting parts; but there is also a higher, mystical kind of good, which belongs to Reality and is not opposed by any correlative kind of evil.
It is difficult to give a logically tenable account of this position without recognizing that good and evil are subjective, that what is good is merely that towards which we have one kind of feeling, and what is evil is merely that towards which we have another kind of feeling. In our active life, where we have to exercise choice, and to prefer this to that of two possible acts, it is necessary to hve a distinction of good and evil, or at least of better and worse. But this distinction, like everything pertaining to action, belongs to what mysticism regards as the world of illusion, if only because it is essentially concerned with time. In our contemplative life, where action is not called for, it is possible to be impartial, and to overcome the ethical dualism which action requires. So long as we remain merely impartial, we may be content to say that both the good and the evil of action are illusions. But if, as we must do if we have the mystic vision, we find the whole world worthy of love and worship…we shall say that there is a higher good than that of action, and that this higher good belongs to the whole world as it is in reality. In this way the twofold attitude and the apparent vacillation of mysticism are explained and justified.
The possibility of this universal love and joy in all that exists is of supreme importance for the conduct and happiness of life, and gives inestimable value to the mystic emotion, apart from any creeds which may be built upon it. But if we are not to be led into false beliefs, it is necessary to realize exactly what the mystic emotion reveals. It reveals a possibility of human nature – a possibility of a nobler, happier, freer life than any that can be otherwise achieved. But it does not reveal anything about the non-human, or about the nature of the universe in general. Good and bad, and even the higher good that mysticism finds everywhere, are the reflections of our own emotions on other things, not part of the substance of things as they are in themselves. And therefore an impartial contemplation, freed from all preoccupation with Self, will not judge things good or bad, although it is very easily combined with that feeling of universal love which leads the mystic to say that the whole world is good.
The philosophy of evolution, through the notion of progress, is bound up with the ethical dualism of the worse and the better, and is thus shut out, not only from the kind of survey which discards good and evil altogether from its view, but also from the mystical belief in the goodness of everything. In this way the distinction of good and evil, like time, are, it would seem, not general or fundamental in the world of thought, but late and highly specialized members of the intellectual hierarchy.
Although, as we saw, mysticism can be interpreted so as to agree with the view that good and evil are not intellectually fundamental, it must be admitted that here we are no longer in verbal agreement with most of the great philosophers and reigious teachers of the past. I believe, however, that the elimination of ethical considerations from philosophy is both scientifically necessary and – though this may seem a paradox – an ethical advance...
Human beings cannot, of course, wholly transcend human nature; something subjective, if only the interest that determines the direction of our attention, must remain in all our thought. But scientific philosophy comes nearer to objectivity than any other human pursuit, and gives us, therefore, the closest constant and the most intimate relation with the outer world that it is possible to achieve...
Love and hate, for example are ethical opposites, but to philosophy they are closely analogous attitudes towards objects. The general form and structure of those attitudes towards objects which constitute mental phenomena is a problem for philosophy, but the difference between love and hate is not a difference of form or structure, and therefore belongs rather to the special science of psychology than to philosophy. Thus the ethical interests which have often inspired philosophers must remain in the background: some kind of ethical interest may inspire the whole study, but none must obtrude in the detail or be expected in the special results which are sought...
It is only during the last century that an ethically neutral psychology has grown up; and here too, ethical neutrality has been essential to scientific success.
Driven from the particular sciences, the belief that the notions of good and evil must afford a key to the understanding of the world has sought a refuge in philosophy. But even from this last refuge, if philosophy is not to remain a set of pleasing dreams, this belief must be driven forth...
The good which it concerns us to remember is the good which it lies in our power to create - the good in our own lives and in our attitude towards the world. Insistence on belief in an external realization of the good is a form of self-assertion, which, while it cannot secure the external good which it desires, can seriously impair the inward good which lies within our power, and destroy that reverence towards fact which constitutes both what is valuable in humility and what is fruitful in the scientific temper.
Evolutionism, in spite of its appeals to particular scientific facts, fails to be a truly scientific philosophy because of its slavery to time, its ethical preoccupations, and its predominant interest in our mundane concerns and destiny. A truly scientific philosophy will be more humbel, more piecemeal, more arduous, offering less glitter of outward mirage to flatter fallaciuos hopes, but more indifferent to fate, and more capable of accepting the world without the tyrannous imposition of our human and temporary demands.
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Pages 82-83:
"To regard ethical notions as a key to the understanding of the world is essentially pre-Copernican. Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes...Ethics is essentially a product of the gregarious instinct, that is to say, of the instinct to co-operate with those who are to form our own group against those who belongs to other groups...The view of the world taken by the philosophy derived from ethical notions is thus never impartial and therefore never fully scientific. As compared with science, it fails to achieve the imaginative liberation from self which is necessary to such understanding of the world as man can hope to achieve, and the philosophy which it inspires is always more or less parochial, more or less infected with the prejudices of a time and a place."
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hmmm...
"Not just life, but everything, is an ethical activity." (Lila)
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More apples and oranges:
--see also Russel's "History of Western Philosophy", especially the introduction and chapters on Descartes, Bergson and James.
--Plato's "Gorgias" and "Phaedrus" are of inestimable value in appraising the "awful scholarship" of the Phaedrus of ZAMM.
--read Aristotle's "Metaphysics" (at least the beginning). I think you'll find that, apart from his views on rhetoric, this philosopher put in writing the foundations for building an ethical metaphysics such as the MOQ. Or, just read a reputable account of his doctrine of the four causes.
--see "The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution" by P.D.Ouspensky for an opposing view to that of Russel's on the value of "neutrality" in psychological method and principles, or if you're just looking for some good work to do. (the people, at least in the one in Toronto, who form schools of the Fourth Way, seem to be on the right track, or the "rta track", you might say. They have centers worldwide - though you might want to be careful when the topics of so-called "Astral planes" and whatnot come up - to avoid that NOT-mystical pitfall, read, critically, the work of William Q. Judge and Annie Besant - caretaker of Krishnamurti for a period, the majority of whose ideas he (rt-ly) rejected. Theosophism does offer some good insights into the MOQ, it just gets a lot silly in places)
--"Zen and the Brain" by James Austin. If you are scientifically-minded, yet interested too in mysticism per theory and practice, and obviously you find some value in the MOQ, then this could change your life as dramatically as ZAMM and LILA have done for many of the participants in these discussions.
--Spinoza's geometrical metaphysical system of ethics offers great points of comparison with Phaedrus', as of course does that of Hegel also.
--Eliot Deutsch's "Advaita Vedanta - a philosophical reconstruction" should offer lots of room for seeing Pirsig's metaphysics from the Eastern perspective, and understanding some difficult abstract questions relating to the relation between spovs and DQ and "Quality", and help in judging the worth of Russel's points of view as expressed in the essays found in "Mysticism and Logic".
--conversely, read the "Chuang-Tzu" (a great Chinese Taoist), for views which at times contradict B.R. and at times agree with him, but almost always provide strong criticism of Phaedrus' and like projects.
--oh, of course it is quite impossible to gain a full understanding of what "Quality" is in ZAMM without reading for yourself the "Tao Te Ching". I suggest Stan Rosenthal's translation, or for those more mystically-oriented, try that of Aleister Crowley - if you can't find it, but read up on him, and if you think you'd like a go at his work, I will mail you a copy - but I'm warning you, it's, uh... well, "weird", from a classical point of view. Very, very deep and subtle from the romantic.
--"The Book - on the taboo against knowing who you are", by Alan Watts, explains far better than Pirsig did the underlying structure and problems of subject/object dualism, and offers a great contrast to some of Bertrand Russell's views. Anything else, at all, by Watts, is highly recommended. His ideas are a good introduction to those of Wilber's.
See ya later!
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Oh - might as well fly two birds with one wing:
I and another are organizing some sort of conference of those interested in further understanding and applying the MOQ. It's a premature idea at the moment, but the plan is to meet in the Netherlands next August, and have all interested present papers (or, if shy of public speaking, have their papers presented by others) and join smaller, focused discussion groups, or just listen and learn. Naturally, the outline would be more dynamic than static.
The purpose, beyond merely meeting others with similar interests and having live conversations, is to achieve some static-latching, in as dynamic a method as possible, and look for concrete applications of the MOQ. If you would like to attend, or produce an essay/diagram/whatever to be presented, and/or would like to help in the production of this possible event, please email me. I thought now would be a good time to begin seeing if there is enough interest, and also to give time for location and travel arrangements, etc. Hopefully, accomodation will be provided free of charge. We'll see. Maybe it's still too early for this kind of thing. What'd'you think?
Good-bye for now
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