From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Feb 15 2004 - 18:49:18 GMT
Mark, Platt, Paul and all:
Platt said:
..If DQ isn't Spirit I don't know what is. Other names for DQ -- Atman,
Brahman, God, Self, Soul, the Divine, etc.
Paul replied:
I agree with Mark that there is no Spirit or Soul in the MOQ, except as a
static social or intellectual literary expression... Also, with regards to
"God" being a name for Dynamic Quality, the MOQ is an atheistic system and
so God could not be used in the usual, anthropomorphic way. To be clear
though, I'm not saying that this necessarily precludes the viability of all
religion from being compatible with the MOQ perspective.
dmb chimes in:
I'll be damned! This must be a first. I find myself agreeing with Platt and
disagreeing with Paul - on the same day, no less. Well, not exactly. I'd
agree that "the usual, anthropomorphic way" of conceptualizing God is not
compatible with the MOQ, but I think Paul's assertion that "the MOQ is an
atheistic system" goes too far. (According to our dear friend, Mr. Webster,
"atheism" denies the existence of any kind of God or diety, not just "the
usual, anthropomorphic" kind.) Since, in the MOQ, DQ is associated so
closely with religious mysticism, it can't rightly be called an atheistic
system.
Pirsig in Lila chapter 30:
"The MOQ associates religious mysticism with Dynamic Quality but it would
certainly be a mistake to think that the MOQ endorses the static beliefs of
any particular religious sect. Phaedrus thought sectarian religion was a
static social fallout of DQ and that while some sects had fallen less than
others, none of them told the whole truth."
"He thought about how once this integration occurs and DQ is identified with
religious mysticism it produces an avalanche of information as to what
Dynamic Quality is. A lot of this relgious mysticism is just low-grade
"yelping about God" of course, but if you search for the sources of it and
don't take the yelps too literally a lot of interesting things turn up."
dmb continues:
Further, this connection between mysticism and Quality can even be traced
back to prehistoric, preintellectual times. One of Paul's recent favorites
points out that Quality is the generator of social level myths as well as
intellectual philosophical descriptions.
"Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric.
Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece.
That is so historically, and that is so by any application of common
sense. The poetry and the myths are the response of a prehistoric people
to the universe around them made on the basis of Quality. It is Quality,
not dialectic, which is the generator of everything we know." [ZMMp.391]
dmb adds:
And this series of quotes adds to this picture. I think it shows that,
contrary to the standard readings, there has always been a spiritual quest
within the Western philosophical traditon. And it seems to me that one of
the central themes in Pirsig's work is to uncover and recover this hidden
aspect.
Check it out and tell me if you see what I mean...
"Plato is the essential Buddha-seeker who appears again and again in each
generation, moving onward and upward toward the 'one'." (P331)
"...Phaedrus was clearly a Platonist by temperment and when the classes
shifted to Plato he was greatly relieved. His Quality and Plato's Good were
so similar that if it hadn't been for some notes Phaedrus left I might have
thought they were identical" (331-2)
"Phaedrus...eventually comes to the view that Plato's hatred the
rhetoricians was part of a much larger struggle in which the reality o the
Good, represented by the Sophists, and the reality of the True, represented
by the dialecticians, were engaged in a huge struggle for the future mind of
man." (P335)
"It is here that the classica mind, for the first time, took leave of its
romantic oritgins and said, 'The Good and the True are not necessarily the
same," and goes its seperate way." (P336)
"Now Plato's hatred of the Sophists makes sense. He and Socrates are
defending the Immortal Principle of the Cosmologists against what they
consider to be the decadence of the Sophists. Truth. Knowledge. That which
is independent of what anyone thinks about it. The ideal that Socrates died
for. The ideal that Greece alone possesses for the first time in the history
of the world. It is a very fragile thing. It can disappear completely. Plato
abhors and damns the Sophists without restraint ...because they threaten
mankind's first beginning grasp of the idea of truth. That's what it is all
about. The results...are nothing less than the whole world of Western man as
we know it." (P337-8)
"Plato HADN'T tried to destroy ARETE. He had ENCAPSULATED it: made a
permanent fixed idea of of it; he had CONVERTED it to a rigid, immobile
Immortal Truth. ... That was why the Quality Phaedrus had arrived at in the
classroom had seemed so close to Plato's Good. Plato's Good was TAKEN from
the rhetoricians. (P342)
"The difference was that Plato's Good was a fixed and eternal and unmoving
idea, whereas for the rhetoricians it was not an idea at all. The Good was
not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, and ultimately
unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way. " (P342)
"What Phaedrus has been talking about as Quality, Socrates appears to have
described as the soul, self-moving, the source of all things. There is no
contradiction." (P349)
Thanks for your time,
dmb
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