From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk)
Date: Mon Dec 13 2004 - 13:17:39 GMT
Hi DMB
(and MSH, and anyone interested - this'll include my summary of my position)
I was surprised by the tone of this one, in that it seemed much more lucid and reasonable than
usual. Perhaps I should lose my temper more often :o)
Anyhow, a few brief comments, then the summary, as that will hopefully make things clearer.
> dmb replies:
> I'm not trying to evade your questions, honestly. It seems that you are not
> getting the replies I have already written. Perhaps this explains why you
> have ignored them. Are you telling me you did not read my answer to this
> question already? Are you telling me that you never saw the post on the
> distinction between religions of identity and religions of relationship and
> Eckhart's (1260-1327) condemnation by the Church for asserting the former?
I don't recall your posts on Eckhart - were they this year? I was off-list for about six months.
I'll have a rummage in the archives.
> ....I also want to say that the label
> that bothers you so much, Christian mystic, is really not important to my
> point. Clearly, that means something entirely different to you than it does
> to me and apparently my claiming the label for myself has offended you
> somehow. And now it seems to have become a distraction. See, I'm certainly
> not denying that there is a long list of theologians and christian thinkers
> who would vigorously disagree with everything I've been saying, as you have
> yourself. In fact, as I understand it, the vast, vast majority would condemn
> these ideas. And so I'm certainly not trying to appropriate that tradition
> or make any claims that it supports my view. Quite the contrary.
Well that's very helpful, and it will ease a lot if we're clear that 'Christian mysticism' and
'philosophical mysticism' are two different things. However, this may undercut the 'common core'
idea which you hold, but we can come back to that. I'm very happy that Pirsig is a philosophical
mystic in the sense that you affirm, and that he is 'updating' that tradition etc.
> dmb writes:
> Lots of people have been doing the reading, including me. You know the names
> of these various readers already. And again, I think this request to find
> Jamesian mysticism within the christian tradition is quite beside the point
> and can't be done for reasons explained above.
Except that it is exactly what James himself does and if - for the sake of argument - we accept that
you haven't been doing it, it's still a prevalent claim that the Christian mystics were
mystics-in-the-Jamesian sense. Are you now happy to say that the vast majority of people regarded as
Christian mystics were NOT mystics-in-the-Jamesian sense?
> <snip>....The meaning of the christian
> tradition, as I knew it from living in a christian country and growing up in
> the church, only became apparent to me AFTER the mystical experience. It had
> an "Oh, now I get it" kind of effect and the whole mythology was infused
> power and meaning, a meaning that had very little to do with the static
> interpretations I'd always heard. And that's why Pirsig's talk about the
> guilded vines of dogma block out the light makes so much sense to me. It is
> my personal experience that this is true. And I have to say that when ritual
> is asserted to be mysticism, it looks very much like a light-blocking move
> to me.
All I can say is a) my experience was different and led me in a different direction and b) we need
to explore the link between 'experience' and truth because I think you're finding what you were
expecting. I'm sure we'll come back to that.
> dmb says:
> Again, it seems you want me to investigate certain things, like "the
> negation of the negation", in order to save yourself the trouble of having
> to explain what it is or why it matters. I mean, you've giving me a rather
> clipped and cryptic phrase here. Am I supposed to know all about apophatic
> mysticism because I've used terms they use?
No, you're supposed to understand it because I've explained it before. But as long as you're happy
to exclude the Christian tradition from what you're arguing for then we don't need to go down that
route so much; you're using the language differently, that's fine - as long as we're clear that that
is what you are doing.
>...All I
> know is that you mostly disagree with Pirsig on everything concerning
> mysticism and religion, but I honestly could say why, except that you
> believe the tradition is good. But I don't know why. Not really. In any
> case, I think we can discuss this particular point without reference to
> Pirsig or traditon or anything else....
<snip>
> These are difficult circumstances under which to converse. I
> mean, how can we properly discuss philosophical mysticism when we apparently
> can't even agree on the meaning of the key term "mysticism"? I think its
> only fair that we, at least, BEGIN with Pirsig's definitions and
> descriptions, not out of worship or because he's the last, best word on the
> topic, but simply because we all have it in common and this is the MOQ
> forum.
I do disagree with Pirsig when it comes to questions of religion and faith, and if I explain why,
it'll explain why I disagree with you, and why I think it's appropriate to thrash things out in this
forum, even if we sometimes seem to go a long way from Pirsig. Thing is, if you are genuinely happy
to separate out Christian mysticism from philosophical mysticism, then most of my objections are
greatly lessened. We can then just focus on whether Pirsig's position makes sense, and I don't have
to keep jumping up and down saying that you're begging the question. But anyway, here's a summary:
I believe that:
1. Mysticism cannot be understood apart from a particular tradition, of whatever sort (Christian,
Buddhist, Hindu, philosophical etc); in other words, mysticism is not first and foremost about an
'experience';
2. Different mysticisms do not possess a 'common core' underlying surface differences; there is no
'common essence', there are only 'family resemblances';
3. More explicitly, 'philosophical mysticism' I see as a Platonic or neo-Platonic strand of
intellectual enquiry and 'ascent'; I would put Pirsig's characterisation of the MoQ in this
tradition;
4. Christian mysticism critiques philosophical mysticism, especially the intellectualism and the
emphasis on experience;
5. Schleiermacher and James (etc) are largely responsible for the common understanding of
'mysticism' in our society today; they are philosophical mystics, but they claimed that Christian
mysticism was the same; they are demonstrably wrong in that claim; they also associate mysticism
with experience _in_a_novel_way;
6. There is evidence for a link between SOM and philosophical mysticism; that's what my essay was
looking at, and that's what I'd be most interested in continuing to explore.
Now, when you bring certain thinkers to bear to support your position, I read them as either a)
belonging to the 'original' philosophical mystical tradition (eg Plotinus) OR b) belonging to the
Jamesian tradition (Wilber, Fox, Campbell etc) and therefore depending on flawed presuppositions.
It's the presuppositions that I want to explore, and which I see as interesting for understanding
Pirsig. In other words, even though I think he's wrong and Christian mysticism is 'right', I think
it's a worthwhile exercise to explore Pirsig's view on this.
What I most object to in your analysis is that I understood you to be arguing, with Schleiermacher
and James, that Christian mysticism was the same as philosophical mysticism, either explicitly
(asserting that Eckhart, for example, was a philosophical mystic) or implicitly (genuine mystics
access a 'common core', therefore if they are true mystics, they will be philosophical mystics). If
you're happy to let those two arguments drop, then I'm sure we'd move a long way forward rapidly.
Although it would be asking a lot for you to let go of the 'common core' viewpoint, I suspect.
Why don't we look at Eckhart in more detail? I'll try and find your post that you refer to.
Cheers
Sam
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
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 : Mon Dec 13 2004 - 13:21:35 GMT