Hullo Willem,
It certainly seems Northrop is the originator of the fundamental tenet of
the MOQ. A very interesting quote. The key section is:
"instead of regarding consciousness as a faculty or property of a knower by
means of which he takes hold of and is aware of purely subjective projected
aesthetic materials such as colors and sounds, a knower will be thought of
as conscious because he is composed of irreducible, ineffable, aesthetic
materials. It is the primacy of the aesthetic and the ineffability of
anything known with immediacy which is the source of the so-called
consciousness of the individual and not the consciousness of the individual
which is the source of the aesthetic materials."
My problem is with the phrase "irreducible, ineffable, aesthetic materials".
Perhaps "materials" is just a bad choice of word. It sounds very SOM to me.
So does "composed of". "a knower will be thought of as conscious because he
is composed of [certain] materials."! Hmmm.
To me Whitehead is a better guide here. He talks of prehensions, which is
just as unclear in some ways. However he would suggest that it is our
ability to apprehend quality that is basic. At the risk of being labelled
irremediably SOMish, I would further argue that our awareness of quality is
dialogical, in that there is something apprehended, there is a self that
apprehends, and that "our ability to apprehend quality" is a process. Maybe
to God, if he or she exists, quality can be observed as a noun. But to me,
as a human agent, quality is in the flavour of my encounter with whatever
is, and is much more adjectival or adverbial.
I would further argue that quality comes in at least four flavours, the
first being the biological variety shared with other animals, and which is a
given in the experience of living things. This 'quality' is the substance of
animal experience, and is the totality of what animals apprehend. But people
are different. That is why we argue about free will. An animal does not have
an option; it responds to the quality it apprehends. While it may balance a
number of inputs to arrive at an outcome, it is really not free to choose.
This is the flavour of quality Pirsig is describing when he says that what
does not have quality cannot be apprehended. "A thing that has no value does
not exist." (Lila Ch 8)
The three other flavours of quality are perhaps unique to humans. They are
the aesthetic, or artistic quality, mentioned by Northrop; the good, the
essence of social quality, incorporating morality and justice; and the true,
the test of intellectual and scientific quality. These seem to me
self-evidently real. These are the flavours of quality Pirsig is describing
when he says "One can then examine intellectual realities ... simply to
enjoy and keep those that are of value" (Lila, Ch 8).
I expect that there is a further, fifth, flavour of quality, which is the
apprehension of meaning. This, I suspect, is what Pirsig was actually
pursuing, and is encountered in higher levels of human experience accessed
through a practice, usually meditative. This is what is missing in modern
Western society, according to Pirsig, and is perceived as an underlying low
quality to our lives. "There was no way you could say why this quality was
no good. You just felt it." (Lila Ch22)
In speaking of flavours of quality, I wish to indicate that these processes
are similar in that they involve encounters with transformative potency, yet
they differ in significant ways, and cannot be reduced to one amorphous
"Quality". "Quality" is an intellectual construct, and in my view does
little to assist our understanding of this very significant field. It
actually is theology, at least as Pirsig uses it.
John B
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:25 BST