THRACIAN IMPRECISELY SPECULATED:
>RMP as Phaedrus "philosophizes" which is generally defined as to theorize
>or speculate in an imprecise manner. This is an approach that is markedly
>different than that of Western philosophy a la Hegel. RMP doesn't say that
>such-and-such is and "nonsuch-and-nonsuch" is not. Rather, he takes the
>reader on a journey of discovery during which truths discovered early in
>the journey may be found false later in the journey, in light of further
>experience. In other words, the only constant is change. What is true today
>is false tomorrow - but it may be true again on the following day. First
>there is a mountain! Then there is no mountain! Then there IS a mountain!
>It's what the I Ching is all about. It is the essence of Taoism. And, if
>the Tao could be named (which it can't), it might be called QUALITY!
It's funny that you use the example of Hegel - this is exactly what I was
writing about in the first place. Hegel's philosophy IS experiential,
progressive, narrational, developmental, whatever you want to call it - an
open-ended dialectic. "Truth" on one level is shown to be partial and not
self-sufficient on the next level of the philosophy's progress. It's not for
nothing that Hegel is pointed to as the obvious link between Eastern and
Western thought. "The only constant is change"- it was Hegel who
reintroduced Herakleitus into 'serious' Western philosophy.
The only place Hegel calls a halt to the movement of his system, and in that
sense, 'totalises' or seals off his system from further modification, is the
conclusion of the 'Phenomenology', which suggests that the end of the
development of truth lies in Hegel's philosophy itself, which represents the
Time-Spirit reading itself, the Time-Spirit's final self-knowledge. This
seems like hubris on the one hand, though on the other you could see it as a
tacit admission that one person's speculative theory can't over-reach the
bounds of their own imprecise speculating and theorizing; Hegel's narrative
of everything must end with Hegel, just as Pirsig's must end with Pirsig.
The Young Hegelians quickly dropped this 'conclusive' aspect of Hegel's
system anyway.
My point, again, is that Pirsig's philosophy, far from being "markedly
different" from the idealist Western mainstream, fits comfortably within its
traditional parameters and techniques of discourse.
Lynch
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