Hey, gang.
I was going to spend today working in the print shop, but then I
read this in a post by Bodvar:
_______________________
Once we have put subjects and objects in their proper place
- as a static plane (Intellect) of the MOQ sequence - they are taken
care of. They are no longer the two sides of the reality "coin";
THEY ARE THE TWO SIDES OF ONE COIN IN THE QUALITY COLLECTION !
The one of the highest value but still a mere coin. You go to
great lengths to explain what it is like to be a person (subject) and
considering things from from the object's pov etc, and your
explanations are superb. I agree about the Greek polis, about
psychology and with most of what you write, but that can wait.
We have too much of wilderness to survey (as Pirsig says in his
anniversary greeting to the LS) to become bogged down, so come on
Donny shoulder your formidable intellect and stop surveying every
nook and creek. We are about to find the sources of the Nile.
________________________
Well, one thing I've learned the hard way is that doing
lithogrophy is like motercycle maintanace: If you're mind is 100 miles
away -- don't do it; you'll screw it up.
And this post definatly put my mind 100 miles away.
So insted of at the press, I've spent the last 3 hours sitting on
a park bench feeding ducks. Bo, the ducks thank you.
The situation is as frustrating as it is comic. If one trys to
move ahead somewhere he encounters loads of confusion. From Bodvar I get
the "it's all mind (Donny)"... from Ken:
________________________
Up to this point no intellect was operating in the biosphere.
Non-sentient Quality was the sole arbiter of events.
(I[f] we ask Donny, these conditions obtained until the Greeks amassed
enough slaves so that they could sit around on their duffs and think pure,
uncontaminated by exigency, thoughts. Forgive me Donny, I couldn't resist
that.)
_________________________
Ken, I don't mind being jabed at... but this does seem to be a
similer thing as w/ Bodvar's misrepresentation of me. If you're talking
about IntpoVs, then, actually, I think they *really* came into full being
in this century. They might have been implicitly concieved in Old Athens,
and they got a boost from Gallilao in the Scientific Revolution and from
Voltaire, Roussou, Jefferson and Franklin, etc. in the Enlightenment...
but only in this century did they "take over."
On the other hand, Ken, I don't identify IntPoVs w/ sentience or
mind or "free will" or "thought"... I define it they way Pirsig has:
logical values (riger, coherience, compleatness, comunicability,
validity...). I wouldn't say that everything w/o that is "non-sentient."
Sentience/non-sentience is another form of the person/thing,
minded/mindless distinction which I call "Subject-object thinking" (SO-t)
and identify as the bassis of Society and social values. And I've said
that "society" goes back about 6-7,000 years before Golden Age Greece. So
you're statment makes no sense to me, Ken.
But all of this I've said before. If I go back then I'm not
'proceeding in the spirit of Pheadrus' -- If I go forward then the typical
result is confusion and the knee-jerk reaction to that (at least around
here): 'You're a SOMite.' And the confusion to me seems so on-the-surface
apparent. Bodvar, for example, said:
_____________________
I do know that
Phaedrus of ZMM said something similar about gravity before Newton,
but P. of ZMM had not conceived the MOQ and it has an unmistakably
SOM-idealist ring to it ... nothing exists outside mind..etc.
______________________
Bodvar, the MoQ is Idealism. Track me on this:
1) "SOM" means, roughly, a metaphysical system based upon the
ontological seperatness subject and object, mind and body, thought and
matter, in-here and out-there, etc.
2) "Idealism" is a philosophy that holds that subject and object
are two manifestations of the same thing; thoughts "in-here" and stuff
"out-there" are identical the way 2 is identical w/ 1+1 or 3-1 or 4/2 --
same thing, difrent *mode of expression*. Typically Idealsisms are an
absolute monism.
CONCLUSION: An Idealism can not possibly be a SOM! -- By
definition!
3) The MoQ sets itself opposed to SOM -- says that SOM is a "bad
start" or a "poor begining" or some such.
CONCLUSION: The MoQ is an Idealist philosophy.
But that's not here nor there, and, believe it or not, I'm not a
big fan of broad catagories of philosolology anyway. These tend to have
little explanitory juice and (more importantly) they are all just relative
to how you use the intellectual knife and make your cuts. They are never
'already given.'
But I would like to clairify this statment that the MoQ is an
Idealism one step further.
Since I'm backing up right now, I may as well back up all the way
to ZMM. I know this urks Bodvar, but I think both he and Pirsig
underestimate ZMM. LILA may well be the (Classically) smart one
(Romantically it leaves a lot to be desired) but you'd be damn hard
pressed to argue that it's the higher quality of the two books. ZMM's
greater success cannot be written off entierly to luck, timeing or a
catchy title. But I know where Pirsig's coming from. As an artist, I can
tell you that whenever you do something extrordinary it 'raises the bar,'
and everyone expects that or better frome now on (including you, because
you don't want it to be just a fluke). I can only imagine what it'd be
like to hit a grandslam homerun you're first time at bat. That would kill
a lot of artists. But it's only natural for Pirsig to want to elivate
LILA above ZMM (and to feel reluctant to write a 3rd book).
Anyway, in ZMM he writes, right after discribing the big Quality
realization -- that Q creates S's and O's: (chapter 20)
___________________________
He [Pheadrus] begain to see that he had shifted away from his
previous stand. He was no longer talking about a metaphysical trinity but
an absolute monism. Quality was the source and substance of everything.
A whole new flood of philosophic associations came to mind. Hegel
talked like this, with his Absolute Mind. Absolute Mind was independent
too, both of objectivity and subjectivity.
However Hegel said the Absolute Mind was the source of everything,
but then excluded romantic experience from the 'everything' it was the
source of. Hegel's Absolute was completly clssical, completly rational and
completly orderly.
Quality was not like that.
Pheadrus remembered that Hegel had been regarded as a bridge
between Western and Oriental philosophy. The Vedanta of the Hindus the Way
of the Taoist, even the Buddha had been described as an absolute monism
simmiler to Hegel's philosophy. Phaedrus doubted that at the time,
however, whether mystical Ones and metaphysical monisms were
introconvertable since mystical Ones follow no rules and metaphysical
monisms do... Metaphysical entities are defined. Mystical Ones are not.
That made Quality mystical. No. Really it was both.
___________________________
The philosophy of ZMM and the MoQ certainly are Idealisms along w/
Hegel, Kant, Taoism, Vedanta and Buddhism. Sorry Bo. Sorry Magnus.
Some other observations about this passage (not relovent but just
drifting) I'd like to make are:
1) His use of 'Absolut Mind' tells me he's read Baillie's
translation of the *Phenominology*. Not good. Baillie (and all the British
Hegalians) tried to 'psychologize' Hegel and stick him into some Cartisan
mind/body paradigm; hence, Ballie translated *Giest* as 'Mind.' Literaly
it means 'Spirit,' but the way Hegel uses it, it means something like
'reciprocity,' 'identity through opposition,' 'absolute identity in
absolute otherness'... Think *tat twam assi* and you've got the picture.
But in spite of Ballie's hang-ups (a friend of mine who read both
versions together, told me that Ballie's got extra sentences that he just
stuck in there himself to 'clairify') it seems that Pheadrus probably got
the gist of it.
2) Note that he's already got the foundation of the DQ/sq split.
I don't care what he says in LILA, all he did was change the emphasis of
Classic/Romantic. One page later than the above quote he gives his
translation of the *Tao te Ching* and writes:
_________________________
Quality [Romantic Quality] and its manifestations [classic
Quality] are in their nature the same. It is given different names
[subjects and objects] when it becomes classically manifest.
_________________________
rQ = orientation toward the whole, unnameable One. cQ =
orientation toward the parts we can cut up w/ the knife (our 4 sq
sandpiles) and defind. ZMM presents them as an *attitude* -- a
difference in orientation. LILA presents them as a difference in
freedom/structure, but the essential idea is parallel.
3) This one I wanted to point out for Anthony's sake (hi
Anthony!), who's re-rased the DQ question. At the hart of the question is
the mystacism/metaphysics issue I raised w/ 'On Heidegger' and Pirsig
raised in the above quote. Pirsig can't make up his mind about it. He
wants it both ways and we want to know, 'Well, is it
definable/communicable or isn't it?'
If he were more of a philosolologist he might have gone over the
history I've traced out several times: Kant settels the Cartisen mind/body
delima and the empericist/rationalist debate and settles Hume's
epistamological questions by introducing a trancendint, atemporal,
non-spacial, One from which experience (S's and O's) is derived. Kant
says the One is unknowable, but that we should have faith in it (if he
were Indian rather than Christian he'd have said, 'only experience it
directly' ...'only feel it.').
In ZMM, when Pheadrus decides to leave Q undefined he spicifically
says Pheadrus wished Kant were still alive because he knew Kant would
appriceate the beuaty of that move.
So Kant is a mystic (more or less).
But along come Fichte, Schelling and Hegel and they all say, 'if
it's unknowble, you can't say it exists.' So they set out to say the
unspeakable and think the unthinkable. Some of the LS (Ken Clark) are in
the same boat w/ F., S. and H. -- 'It has to be rational and comunicable!
Otherwise why are we talking about it anyway? Why don't we all just head
for the monastaries and get groovy?'
So, not only does this tie-in w/ Anthony's re-raising of the DQ
question, but it also has a lot to do w/ what I said a while back in 'On
Heidegger' about a 'post-metaphysical' philosophy -- Intelectual rhythms
you could follow that would lead you, not into eternal knifeing, dividing
and sub-catigorizing ad nausium, but would actually lead you back towards
the One -- DQ.
That is what hegel's philosophy was all about. That you could be
rational and mediated -- but that you could use this power to reconcial
apparent opposition. Rather than an analytic knife, Hegel had synthasizing
glue. I'm mighty impressed w/ Hegel by and large. Though... still...
personally I think I'm more mystic than metaphysitian. ...maybe
But that's no longer here nor there. And that's not what I was
thinking about in the park all day. I was thinking about Bodvar's
________________________
We have too much of wilderness to survey (as Pirsig says in his
anniversary greeting to the LS) to become bogged down, so come on
Donny shoulder your formidable intellect and stop surveying every
nook and creek. We are about to find the sources of the Nile.
________________________
I can't go back because to re-trace my steps is percieved as
tedious, boaring, anal, nit-picky and not in the spirit of Phaedrus (and
refering to ZMM!? Heaven forbid!).
But I can't go forward because then I'm confusing, aubserd (ie.
Ken's responce to my use of the Eastern view of time), a SOMite, or
(as, I believe Bodvar would have me) some kind of anti-MoQist
disingenuously posing as a MoQite.
Doubble-blocked.
That leaves only lateral drifting.
Lateral drifting is good for philosophy... but the LS as a whole
seems to hve a problem w/ it. It was the amount of lateral drifting
previously which brought on the PROGRAMs. you can't drift when you've got
a PROGRAM.
I kept thinking about pirsig's 'pep talk.'
__________________________
"I sometimes see you as a group of surveyors at the edge
of a kind of intellectual wilderness. You're all engaged in a creative
activity rather than just sitting back parroting and dissecting old
masters. This is real philosophy. I can't tell you where to go because
I don't really know for sure myself. And if I did, I probably shouldn't
tell you anyway because that might spoil all the Dynamic adventure and
excitement this wilderness offers."
__________________________
...
I think it is time for me to drift a bit -- to push in an
unexplored direction. It's one I see, but I think it'll be new to the LS.
I'm going to break this off now. My next post (expect it soon)
will continue w/ these thoughts about lateral drift, say a few things
about Bo's Nile, and Magnus' burning libray (finally). (What's w/ the
Egyptain theme?)
Next post: BOOKWORLD
CU there,
Donny
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