Hullo David (and Bo),
I thought your post to Bo was excellent, David. Concise and in my view
absolutely on the ball.
With one exception. I disagree that Pirsig is a mystic. I have just sent in
an essay on quality and mysticism, and have considerably modified my earlier
(rather negative) views of mysticism as a reversion to a biological level of
functioning. To save time I will quote from it...
"I find it interesting that Pirsig is often taken to be a mystic, as Antony
McWatt, for example, explicitly argues in his response to an earlier essay
of mine. Pirsig claims to have avoided the 'easy escape' of that path, and
to me it appears that he represents a modern metaphysics responsive to
mystic insight, but knowing about truth, rather than experiencing the truth
that comes from immersion in a transformational praxis. He is perhaps, a
'mystic manque', someone who is attracted to the mystic view, while not yet
'enlightened' (if indeed enlightenment exists). Hameed Ali (who writes under
the pen name of A.H. Almaas) says, "a central thread in the field of Western
philosophical thought concerns epistemological questions regarding the
experience of the self. This body of thought has penetrated the naive
assumptions of conventional thought regarding the nature of self and the
world, and brought profound appreciation of the difference between mental
constructs and more fundamental reality. However, this tradition does not
focus on actual methods of transforming the experience of the self." ('The
Point of Existence', p 178)
This seems to me to apply particularly well to Pirsig. The subject/object
metaphysics that Pirsig so loathes is an assumption of the nature of self
and the world, and Pirsig has indeed produced a more profound appreciation
of the nature of fundamental reality in his exploration of quality. Yet his
book is a product of the Church of Reason, as he refers to the academic
world in 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', and while pointing to
a mystic depth in reality, he actually offers a rather unweildy and
unworkable rule based ethics using the four levels of static quality that he
explores in 'Lila'. A true mystic wouldn't bother, as Pirsig acknowledges in
his discussion in Ch 5 of 'Lila'. For the mystic, ethics is not an issue;
rather, a clear and close relationship to truth provides an integral ethics,
in which actions are not debated, or chosen, but lived."
Regards,
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 - 16:01:52 BST