From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sat Nov 30 2002 - 17:47:28 GMT
Hi Sam, Wim:
I very much appreciate your views on this touchy subject. I'd like to say
just a couple of things about Sam's post and later comment on Wim's.
Sam wrote:
> A comment of Wittgenstein's that I am fond of is: "The fear of death is the
> best sign of a bad (ie false) life." What I take him to mean is that if you
> are afraid of death you haven't actually achieved any integrity in your
> life.
Pardon my ignorance of Christianity but isn't there something about
judgment day where your life is reviewed and if you haven't been "good"
you're sent straight to hell? Wittgenstein seems to hint at something
like that by referring to a "bad" life.
>We will all die; that is unavoidable. But death is not something that
> we can experience - it's a boundary. Obviously we can experience dying, but
> not death itself. Either it is a transition or it is a terminus; either
> way, it's not a source of concern.
Plato said something similar:
"If the soul is not immortal, we shall not know that we are dead. If the
soul is immortal, eternity is only a single night."
> So if I were asked whether I believed in 'life after death' (of either
> sort) the short answer is: I don't know, and it's not a 'weight bearing'
> part of my faith. That is, I don't think and feel and act the way that I do
> because I have a hope of a reward after death. I am the way that I am
> because it is 'the way the truth and the life' - in this life. It makes
> sense to me, it feels right, it seems to hold more truth and meaning than
> anything else I've come across. Anything else (after this life) is a bonus.
> I don't disagree with the idea of life after death, it just doesn't mean
> very much to me - quite literally, I can't make much sense of it. The
> beatific vision seems much too Platonic, everlasting life doesn't make
> philosophical sense.
What captured my attention most of all in both Sam's and Wim's posts
was their use of the word "meaning" which served as a synonym for
"value." In the passage above, Sam could just as well written, "It makes
sense to me, it feels right, it seems to hold more truth and value than
anything else I've run across." and " . . . it just doesn't hold much value
for me." When something is meaningful to someone, it signals a
recognition of Quality.
Besides that, what I find fascinating about the word "meaning" as Sam
and Wim use it is that there's no specific reference or pattern one can
point to and say, "That's what I mean by 'meaning.'" Yet we understand
them perfectly well. Pirsig also knows what they are talking about. At
the end of the SODV he wrote:
"The Conceptually Unknown, it seems to me is a workable intellectual
category for the description of nature and it ought to be worked more.
As a starting axiom I would say, "Things which are intellectually
meaningless can nevertheless have value." I don't know of an artist who
would disagree with that. Certainly not Rene Magritte."
The connection between aesthetic and religious "meanings" is so close
as to be almost inseparable. Both are above the intellectual level in the
realm of Spirit, Quality or, as Wim suggests, "Meaning" with a capital
letter.
Can't help but be reminded of Hamlet's words:
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
But not much that isn't covered by the MoQ :-)
Platt
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 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 30 2002 - 17:48:04 GMT