Hi Squonk,
>
> Sq: I rather felt you had aspirations to sit at cap'ms table? No? OK. I
> apologise.
> I really like metaphysics. It is what got me going and what keeps me going;
> and i have to say, i rather like placing Quality at the centre of a
> metaphysics! I love it!
> I like it because if you get onto it, you can sit down with anyone and relate
> to quality in ways which cut right through all the high sounding guff? Don't
> you feel?
> If the western classical philosophical tradition has gone up its own rear so
> to speak, then it can be at least never far from interesting to see different
> generations of philosophers continually drawing near to the same thing but
> never quite dealing with the metaphysical barrier?
> All language is metaphor? I agree with you there. But what a good metaphor
> Quality is?
> If we discover ourselves bound by suffocating dreams inflated with the heat
> of rationality, one may search out cool arbours of fragrant quality. And
> breath afresh...
>
> All the best,
> Squonk.
This is the Squonk I like. The one that beams good-naturedly and is filled to
the brim with unbridled excitement about Quality. When you speak like this,
sometimes I think the gulf between our two vocabularies is not so far.
What makes me think this is the ease to which I think you can dispense with
metaphysics and still talk about Quality, have all the freshness of air, the
fragrant smell of new, Dynamic directions and metaphors. What Quality means is
that we all make value judgements, everyday of our lives. The various static
patterns we've experienced is the context from which we make our choices. They
are the base set of values we have. Discussion of how the MoQ helps moral
judgements has faced problems because people see Quality in different things.
I think this is exactly the point. Our contingent circumstances (read: our
static patterns) are going to condition us to see Quality in different places.
The chief contribution Pirsig had in Lila to overcome this so-called, seeming
"relativism" (which wasn't in fact really there) was Dynamic Quality. Dynamic
Quality is the striving for excellence that cannot be named, because as soon as
you do, you've condemned it to staticness, as an ahistorical truth. Dynamic
Quality is the new metaphor over the horizon, its the invention of a new
context that helps us see the low Quality of our old context. Dynamic Quality
is not absolute, objective Truth. That would be naming it. That would be
making the same mistake that Plato made, which may have been a good idea at the
time, but one we now need to overcome.
Pirsig (and Rorty's thought, for that matter) is inherently Oedipal. The goal
of excellence is to overcome the past, the low Quality of those that have
preceded you. It is a constant dialectical, dialogical interplay that yields
up new insights and allows you to move forward, up and beyond the contingent
past. There is no endpoint, no solid footing. There are only new contexts
that can, nay must, be overcome.
This, Squonk, is why I want to get rid of metaphysics. Because the goal of
metaphysics, the onto-theological tradition (to use Heidegger's term), the
tradition handed down to us by Plato and Aristotle, through Descartes and Kant,
is to enshrine Dynamic Quality (in the guise of the Good, Truth, God, Reason,
Science, etc.), and that is exactly what we must resist. When Whitehead said
that all of Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, Rorty says
that Whitehead's point "was that we do not call an inquiry 'philosophical'
unless it revolves around some of the distinctions which Plato drew." We must
repudiate the Platonic tradition, rid ourselves of metaphysics, which brokers
on the Platonic distinction of appearence--reality, and forge ahead with
Dynamic Quality. When Pirsig said, "It was time Aristotle got his," Pirsig was
saying that its time that the entire Platonic tradition got its Oedipal
comeuppance.
All the best,
Matt
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