-----Original Message-----
From: Platt Holden <pholden5@earthlink.net>
To: moq_discuss@moq.org <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Date: Thursday, February 18, 1999 10:57 AM
Subject: Re: MD Schopenhauer's Will
Hi Jason and Group:
Glad you brought up Schopenhauer because he's one of my favorite
philosophers. I like him because, to quote Will Durant , "He saw that the
ultimate good is beauty, and that ultimate joy lies in creating and
cherishing the beautiful."
Jason wrote:
> First, It seems that Schopenhauer has described the will as the ultimate and highest force in the world. Will is even higher up on a scale of "value" than intellect. Now I realize that Schopenhauer's Will, which is, drives like hunger, and sex would be biological quality in the MoQ. But
Schopenhauer also associates instinct with these drives. My problem is that I have always thought of instinct as associated with quality, or pure being like in Zen. Schopenhauer says that the intellect divides, but tha
> Thank you,
To me Schopenhauer's Will is not limited to biological quality but is rather
more inclusive, like Dynamic Quality itself--"the free force of life, the
source of all things, completely simple and always new." As such, you
can correctly I think call it an "instinct," whether an instinct for survival or
an instinct for happiness, humor, freedom, perfection, beauty, or "pure
being."
Or, you can call Will "dharma," the principle of rightness "which gives
structure and purpose to the evolution of all life and to the evolving
understanding of the universe which life has created."
In other words, Jason, I see Schopenhauer's Will to be synonymous with
Pirsig's Dynamic Quality--"the ultimate and highest force in the world."
Platt
Thanks Platt,
I kind of suspected this myself, and I think that you are right. It was just interesting to me because when I was reading Schopenhauer I basically just made the correlation. Maybe it has something to do with all of the quality talk.
Best Regards,
Jason Nelson
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