From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Jun 14 2003 - 22:44:30 BST
Rick, Sam and all:
Sam said:
I think there is potential in the correspondence - eros = biological level
love, agape = social
level love, amor = fourth level love. I'll think about that some more, but
it seems good (and
eudaimonic!). Just as the higher levels are built upon the lower elsewhere,
it seems to me that you
can only have amor if the lower levels are also satisfied, which means,
amongst other things, that
adultery (to my mind) cannot be amor (although consider also the 'sex, lies
and videotape' example I
asked Paul about).
dmb says:
I'm grateful to Rick for introducing this issue. I'm quite psyched about it
and find the conversation to be quite delicious. Except for some exceptional
cases of adultry, I agree with you Sam. "The higher levels ARE built upon
the lower ones." I think this is very much what Pirsig is saying. Descartes
could only think because French culture existed first. All our intellectual
descriptions are culturally derived. He says it lots of different ways, but
the basic idea is only that the higher levels depend on the lower ones for
their very existence. I want to focus on this troubadour thing, but I should
mention that this is why Pirsig DOES NOT say that intellectual persons are
"just level 4" or just "a collection of ideas". As I understand the MOQ,
this is metaphysically impossible. By definition, an intellectual person
MUST also include the first three levels first. As the author puts it, we
are each "a forrest of static patterns" and the differences between people
are just a matter of where the center of gravity lies, which values dominate
that person. Anyway, getting back to amor and such...
dmb continues:
I don't know about the movie, but in the legend of Tristan and Isolde our
hero has two girls, one he marries and one he loves. The defiance of social
traditions for the sake of a higher love, that's what its all about. Adultry
is just one of those social traditions. And it important to remember the
context in which these defiant acts took place. Unlike today's world,
adultry won't just bring shame and embarrasment, then it could get you
tortured and killed and EVEN WORSE. Your immortal soul could be damned for
eternity and yet they still defied the authorities and risked all that. In
the legend of Abelard and Heloise, he is castrated and condemned as a
heretic and she is forced into a convent. That is some kind of powerful
love, eh? Naturally, that doesn't make every cheater a hero. I'd agree that
most of the time adultry is not so auspicious, but in these legends amor and
adultry go hand in hand.
Sam said:
BTW the quotes from Campbell were depressing, and display a mind-numbing
conformity to conventional
thinking. To say (of personal love) that "That's completely contrary to
everything the Church stood
for. It's a personal, individual experience, and I think it's the essential
thing that's great
about the West and that makes it different from all other traditions I know"
simply displays
astonishing historical ignorance. Where does he think the language for the
troubadour tradition came
from, if not from the 'Song of Solomon' and all the contemporaneous
commentaries on it? Campbell
seems blithely unaware that Bernard of Clairvaux was the generation before
Chretien de Troyes, and
that the troubadours adapted religious language for their purposes in just
the same way that modern
pop songs are derived from religious singing. (If you're interested, see
'The discovery of the
individual, 1050 - 1200", by Colin Morris). Grrrr!!
dmb says:
I don't think you can rightly accuse Campbell of ignorance without really
knowing what he's got to say on the topic. Please trutst me on this. The
quotes from Rick are just a small sample of a very large thing. He connects
Christianity to these legends in lots of different ways. Nearly half of The
Masks of God, which is two or three thousand pages of material in a four
volume set reccomended by Pirsig, is devoted to unpacking various versions
of these romantic legends. The broken hearted musician/lover can be seen in
David and Orpheus, in Paul, in the mystics, in Christ and the Grail legends,
the legends of abelard and tristan as well as the troubadours and countless
other permutations. The thing you object to and find "a mind-numbing
conformity to conventional thinking" is only what the troubadours themselves
were saying! I can understand why a priest would feel uncomfortable with
such a thing, but I hardly think you can blame the messenger here. The clash
between the church and these lovers can be seen plainly by anyone who looks.
(Amor is Roma backwards.) I mean, sometimes conventional views are very well
founded, you know?
More later,
DMB
P.S. Wasn't the Church of England founded to escape Rome's authority over
Henry's 8th marriage? :-)
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