Re: MD Epigrams on Quality

From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Apr 03 2005 - 21:13:08 BST

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    Steve:

    > Platt quotes Pirsig:
    > _______________________
    >
    > "Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual
    > abstractions. Quality is indivisible, indefinable and unknowable in the
    > sense that there is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of
    > these things. Quality is a the primary empirical reality of the world."
    > (Lila, 5) _______________________
    >
    > Thanks for that. What I really was after was why SQ was left out of your
    > epigrams. This points at what I called our 'fascination' with the idea of
    > DQ. Further to the point, you post was entitled 'Epigrams to Quality', not
    > Dynamic Quality, but Quality w/o any qualifier. Yet from your response it
    > is clear you mean Dynamic or pre-metaphysical quality.

    I take it then that you consider the above passage by Pirsig to be about
    Dynamic Quality, not about Quality. By contrast, I take it to be about
    Quality before he divides it in order to do metaphysics. You'll recall
    Pirsig hesitated to create a new metaphysics because it would violate the
    mystic understanding of reality that doesn't require the divisions
    necessary for thought. In fact, thinking, according to mystics, takes you
    away from, not closer to, reality. But, Pirsig decided to do a metaphysics
    anyway, and in order to do it, he had to divide "indivisible" Quality.

    I look at it this way:

    Subject/Object Metaphysics (SOM) divides reality into subjects and
    objects.

    Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ) divides reality into Dynamic and static
    quality.

    Pirsig's paragraph above, and my epigrams, point to indivisible Quality
    before the division into Dynamic and static. That's why I called them "pre-
    metaphysical."

    We may be more fascinated with DQ than SQ. But to think that's so
    requires previously cutting Quality into two parts.

    Regards,
    Platt

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