From: Dan Glover (daneglover@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Aug 16 2004 - 04:57:54 BST
Hello everyone
>From: "Scott Roberts" <jse885@earthlink.net>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>Subject: RE: MD Plotinus, Pirsig and Wilber
>Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 19:51:09 -0600
>
>Dan,
>
>I agree that there are similarities between Plotinus and Pirsig, but those
>same similarities can be found in the Tao and in Whitehead.
Hi Scott
I imagine that's why those three choices were chosen in the first place.
It's not a simple question to answer.
>So when it
>comes to picking the one "more similar" to Pirsig, I chose Whitehead only
>because his philosophy would necessarily be in reaction to SOM, as is
>Pirsig's, whereas the other two are not.
I would have chosen the Tao if not for coming across that part about
Plotinus in Anthony's Textbook ( http://www.anthonymcwatt.co.uk/ ). I've
read where Mr. Pirsig alligns the MOQ with Buddhism but I don't think he
comes out and says it's the same as the Tao. I did find this in Anthony's
Copleston annotations:
Faith is not required for an understanding of Quality. Here Quality succeeds
where Bradley’s Absolute and Hegel’s Being and the Buddhist Nothingness and
the Hindu Oneness and the theists’ God and Allah and you-name-it; all of
them fail. For quality, no faith is required because there is no way you
can disbelieve that there is such a thing as quality. You cannot conceive
of or live in a world in which nothing is better than anything else.
(Robert Pirsig)
>Unfortunately, I am not familiar
>enough with Whitehead to be all that secure in my judgment -- that there
>may be greater differences between Whitehead and Pirsig that make the
>top-down vs bottom-up metaphysics (Plotinus vs. Pirsig) difference not loom
>so large.
>
"Process philosophy" may be understood as a doctrine invoking certain basic
propositions: (1) That time and change are among the principal categories of
metaphysical understanding, (2) That process is a principal category of
ontological description, (3) That process is more fundamental, or at any
rate not less fundamental than things for the purposes of ontological
theory, (4) That several if not all of the major elements of the ontological
repertoire (God, nature-as-a whole, persons, material substances) are best
understood in process linked terms, and (5) That contingency, emergence,
novelty, and creativity are among the fundamental categories of metaphysical
understanding. A process philosopher, accordingly, is someone for whom
temporality, activity, and change -- of alteration, striving, passage, and
novelty-emergence -- are the cardinal factors for our understanding of the
real. ( http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/ )
I'm no Alfred North Whitehead scholar but from what I have read, process
philosophy doesn't seem to align so well with Robert Pirsig's Quality, not
well enough that I would venture that as an answer and then try to defend
it.
Thank you for your comments,
Dan
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