Hello everybody.
I've been too bussy to write in, s please allow me to back-up a
touch.
Jonathan wrote:
> I fully understand what you are getting at, but a map has to be a map of
> something tangible and a metaphor has to allude to something else. The
> point here is that the "reality" we ar talking about can be experienced
> ONLY through maps and metaphors.
MAGNUS responded:
C'mon guys, this isn't the MoQ. Correct me if I'm wrong, Donny?, but isn't
all this talk about maps, metaphors, pragmatic tools and perceived reality
nothing more than idealism.?
_________________________
I've said before that I dislike big -ism words and that still
holds true. The problem w/ them is (1) they tend to have little
explainitory power, and (2) they tend to become slogans on a philosophical
batelfield on which waring camps compete for the prize of being THE
THRUTH! I don't believe philosophy is a battle or that it amounts to
persuasive writing... actualy I consider all proving activity to be what
Aristotle called 2nd philosophy: The skeptical (de/re)construction of the
correct picture of the world (CPOW) -- AKA science. philosophy (1st phil)
is *about* systems of proof and *about* the CPOW. Historians try to
answer the question: What caused the fall of the Roman empire?
philosophers ask: Well, what would count as an explaination of the fall of
Rome, and why? Scientists try and give us the CPOW (give us The Truth)
while metaphysitions ask: Just what is the nature of this CPOW? How does
it exist? What is it's function? If you're going to be *about* proof and
*about* The Truth, then obviously you can't prove anything, and
consequently you can't give The Truth. (The commonest mistake in
metaphysics is to try and ask: What is the correct view on the correct
view? How does the CPOW figure into the CPOW? -- Because of our school
training in answer-thinking, we all stand in the art gallery and are
tempted [even myself] to argue over which is the 'real painting.')
Now... having said that I dislike -ism words, I've also refered to
myself as an 'Idealist.' My only excuse for this is: Hey, you got'ta start
somewhere. :-7
But I've succeded in proving the validity of my own guidline...
even if by breaking it. Going in reverse order:
(2) There is a very definate knee-jerk reaction against me when I
talk about 'Idealism.' After all, that's suposed to be in some other camp
right? That's The Enemy. I mean... that is what Bodvar told me, right?
That he's rather I just came right out and proclaimed myself The Enemy.
(1) The ambiguity of what exactly 'Idealism' means has provided a
huge obstical (thus, the 'lack of explainitory power' part). 'Idealism'
is a word. As such, it means whatever we (collectivly) use it to mean.
What we mean by 'Idealism' depends on how we make our knife-cut.
So now to answer Magnus question.
The way Bodvar, for instance, uses 'Idealism' it means: Reality is
all in your mind. (He makes it a kin to solipsism.) This (coming from a
Norwegian) is a very Anglo-American way of useing the term. Heavily
derivative of Descartes, and strongly reinforced by our modern
psychological mode of thinking. Since Freuad we psychologize everything.
Our language is full of terms like: ego, uncounscious, self-esteem... We
naturaly, seriously etertain the whole 'interior life' idea. But this is
really something of a new mode of thinking. The Greeks didn't think this
way at all, and... what's the famous story? Some monk stumbled upon St.
Augustine reading scilently -- 'to himself' we would say -- and was
freaked-out. you see, before then no one ever read scilently. Reading was
always done out loud. The concept of reading scilently just didn't exist.
I tell this story just to loosen up that Freudian, inner-self baggage. It
was this baggage that led Bailie to translate Hegel's *Geist* as 'Mind'
and has mis-informed the whole British Hegalian movement.
Bodvar, you know good and well that I don't suport that inner-self
-- that 'Mind' view. I've argued aginst it just as loudly as you have.
But more generaly speaking, the idea that 'Idealism' is just a
mater of 'it's all in your head' is only HALF of the two-fold movement *I*
think of as Idealism. It reduces the object into the subject, but it
doesn't complete the movement. A (I will say) 'true' Idealism is
something like Hegel's ethical substance -- which is both ethical (moral,
social, reasonable) AND substantial (I can drink coffie out of it).
My favorite definition of Idealism is one I've quated here before,
but I will do again.
_____________________
'Self-consciousness must not merely relinquish iteslf, alienate
itself, merge itself w/ the substnce, the world, for this would be merely
a one-sided movement of the imagination. (perhaps we could say: an
'idealism' in the sense normaly given the term by Anglo-American
philosophers.) Not only must the subject come to know itself as an
object, but the object must come to the knowledge of itself as a knowing
subject.' (Van de Vate)
______________________
Another definition of Idealism that I like is found in Anond
Malik's *Cultural Studies as a Critical Theory of Education*. He states:
__________________________
'Idealism poastulates that infinite is a part of the finite and the finite
is a part of the infinite. [Particuler=Universal]... Ultimate reality,
according to the Rig Veda (Indian Holy book, c.2000 BCE) is one and its
consciousness leads to *Anand*, pur bliss. It is named Good by Plato,
Substantia by Spinoza, ding-an-sich by Kant, Over-soul by Emerson, and
Unknowable by Herbert Spencer.'
__________________________
In other words, Idealism, in this (more universal) sense refers to
any system of thought in which the subject and the object are seen to be
One. Further, the particuler and the universal are also One.
*Tat twam assi*, that thou art.
It is in this sense that I most certainly am an Idealist, and
anyone who says they agree w/ the MoQ but are not an Idealist (in this
sense of the word) IMHO has very horrablly mis-read Pirsig's books!! You
agree w/ the MoQ, but you don't believe that S=O and O=S!? Is that what
you're telling me, Bodvar? Magnus?
'Idealism' is one of -- perhaps THE -- oldest of all
mythologems. A stamp-seal found in Mohenjo-daro (modern Pakastan) shows
that the practice of yoga goes back to about 2,500 BCE. The Vedas
(mentioned above) could go back to 2000 BCE. The classic form of this
mythologem is that of the World as Dream. In Hinduism:
The world is but the dream of Vishnu. Vishnu sleeps on the coils
of the serpant Ananta (literally: Endless). He dreams this lotus which
grows up from his navel. The lotus opens and there sits Brahma. Brahma's
eyes open in the 4 directions and thus the world comes into being. One
day, the dream will end. Brahma will close his eyes, the universe goes
>POOF< the lotus closes and retracts and Vishnu wakes up.
This is of the oldest examples of this mythologem, but it occurs
elsewhere: In Jicarilla Apache creation story; in Calderon's *La Vida es
Sueno* (Life is a Dream); and in Shakespeare
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with sleep,
Now what is the point of all this? Well, the secret of dreaming is that
in your dream you are everything. Everything there is a manifestation of
you. you (perhaps) identify yourself w/ one particuler character in the
dream, but you are, in truth, all the characters... and even all the
objects. Thus Joseph Campbell contrasts the daylight, wakeing logic --
'Aristotilian logic' -- in which an intellectual knife is at work,
seperating out A from not-A, creating dichotomies, objectivly observing
phenomina in a detached manner... with 'dream logic' in which A can be
not-A, and A readily transforms into B which changes into C... (This is
just the way Hegel's dialectic works!)
Aristotilan (S-O) logic works very, very well on the street and in
the lab -- in 2nd philosophy, but not so well when it comes to 1st
philosphy. If you want to come up w/ a list of things which exist and
what their various catagories of properties are... to cut and divide and
label (sq) then S-O logic (IntPoVs) are the way to go. (And, in spite of
what Magnus may think, Pirsig does acknowledge toward the end of LILA that
the 4 levels of sq are all really IntPoVs -- as the whole MoQ is a set of
IntPoVs!) But if you want to approch that undifferentiated aesthetic
continuem... that conceptually unknown, the *immeadiate* cutting-edge of
experience... that trancendent One which Emerson called over-mind and
Laotzu called Tao --then you can't get at it (DQ) through cutting,
dividing, and nameing.
It is common feature of Idealisms that they tend to generate a
sort of dual-world. One of the criticisms leveled by Hegel (one of the
few who don't split up the world) at Plato was that Plato wanted to make
the world clear and intelligable, and did so by doubbling it -- making it
twice as complex. Now not only do we have the concrete world to worry
about, but we've also got this world of Forms to fret over as well! Ye
gods!
But Plato isn't alone in this weird duality. Kant had his world as
it appears for-us and world as it stands in-itself. In Hinduism: Samsara
(maya) and Nirvana. In Pirsig sq and DQ. (Consider again his words to
Anthony: 'That perspective is just fine for the Buddha, but for the man on
the street it doesn't get us anywhere.' [paraphrased] ZMM is written for
the Buddha; LILA is written for the hard-nosed scientist and for Joe
Six-pack out in the 'real world.')
Consider this Myth:
In the begining there was this garden. And in this garden
there was no real duality. Man and beast lived together. preditor lay down
w/ prey. Man and woman did not know their sexs. And even God would come
down and strool through the garden in the cool of the evenings. No
duality. No oppositions. All is in a state of at-one-ness. Now, there are
two special trees in this garden. The tree of knowledge of good and evil
(and all pairs of opposites) and the tree of immortality. Now the two
humans go and eat of this tree of duality, and suddenly they see all this
duality in the world -- and for the first time they become truely
conscious, aware. They (subject) experience (object). Now this is a
problem for God, because if they now eat of the tree of immortality then
they will become just like him, and he doesn't want that. God, you see,
is that being which is both aware (it exists in its particularity -- as a
self) and also immortal -- that is, trancendent of time, in the
omni-present everywhere everywhen of universality. And God likes his
special status and gelously guards it. So he throws the humans out of his
magic garden and puts two Cherubim at the gate w/ flaming swords.
Now flash forwrd a bit, when another being comes along. He's God
(big universal, abstract being) but also man (particuler, mortal, etc.)
This guy takes the place of the second tree -- the tree of immortality. He
says, 'The Kingdom of Heven will not come by expaectation. The Kingdom of
Heven is spread upon the Earth now, only men do not see it.' (The
trancendent/univeral is here IN the particuler and concrete.) And he
says, 'He whoever drinks the words of my mouth shal become just as I am.'
(You too, boys and girls, can have your own realization of
Buddha-consciousness... or Christ-consciousness, or whatever). Gnosticism
is just Christian Buddhism!
Now, I tell this story because I wanted to bring up the question
of the relation between these worlds. One mythologem utilizes the
concept of a Fall. From at-one we fell into the shamefull, horrible world
of I-This, me-you, A/not-A... And only through atonement (at-one-ment)
can we get back to the Kingdom of Heven. The *REALLY* real reality vs the
only apears so, metaphorical reality.
Now in Hinduism we have a different idea. Contrary to the Fall we
have Lila -- the play. Where God willingly enters into the world in order
to experience Himself. you might have heard the expresion 'the universe
is the result of God playing hide-and-seak w/ himslf.' So here, the field
of time is not bad, low and fallen... It is to be embrased, and
participated in w/ joy. The Bodhisatva ideal is: Joyful participation in
the sorrows of the world.
For, the final word here, comes from Mahayana Buddhism, which
notes: Once you trancend all pairs of opposits -- this and that,
me/not-me, A/not-A... -- you also trancend the samsara/Nirvana division.
the division between reality and 'illusion,' map and teratory, sq and DQ.
At the ultimate all of these fall away.
And in ZMM:
'Reality is the the whole sandpile and the figure in it, so the
Buddha is in the whole. But the parts -- the individual sandpiles are also
real, so the Buddha is in the parts.' (papaphrased from memory)
No wonder Pirsig flip-flops on metaphysics/mysticism,
knowable/unknowable...
*Mu*
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
P.S. Fintan! Glad to have you back. I don't understand a word of
what your saying (Is this how Ken feels when he reads my stuff?), but i
like it. :)
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