From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Mon Feb 23 2004 - 08:25:16 GMT
DMB and Group
You need not second Paul, I'll be returning to you ;-)
On 21 Feb. you wrote:
> Religion, like everything else, began at the social level and for
> millions and millions it still exists at that level,
Agreement.
> but I don't see
> any reason why the topic should be forever trapped there. Deep
> thinking philosphers at the social level? No way. I'm definately with
> Pirsig and Turner on this one.
While here you go wrong: If you deny "religious philosophers" -
deep thinkers even - you slander your favorite Campbell about
the great achievement behind the ancient myths. But social
"thinking" can't cross the intellectual line without becoming a
thinking that promotes a totally different VALUE.
> I think deep thinking philosopher at
> the social level is a logically impossibility.
I'm not very versed in Medieval philosophy, but Johannes
Eckhart and Augustine comes to mind. Anyway, to deny
"thinking" at the social level is .....I'm afraid you have fallen
victim to the INTELLIGENCE playpus.
> A philosopher is a
> philosopher even if she's philosophizing about spiritual concerns.
Right, the Medieval thinkers philosophized about spiritual matters
while the philosophers who took up Greek thinking after the
Renaissance, rejected the whole spiritual "mess" and resumed
the intellectual, scientific, skeptical attitude.
> The
> topic or subject matter under consideration does not determine its
> level of evolution. Not only does Pirsig say that the Buddhist and
> Vendantist philosophies are "one of the profound achievements of the
> human mind"
"Mind"? Has that become Q-Intellect again? Thinking was
ridiculed by Pirsig as an intellectual criterion. I wish both you and
Paul would let that sink in.
> he also points out that the Bible is both social and
> intellectual in content. He says that the early books like Genesis are
> social, whereas the latter books like Paul's letters are intellectual.
> But even more importantly, I think that Pirsig has always been
> interested in recovering spirituality without having to abandon
> intellect. We see this in both ZAMM and LILA....
Christianity is deeply influenced by Greek thinking, and adopted
much of the its SOMish views - for instance the soul/body
distinction - so no wonder it is a social/intellectual mix. And Paul
(the Biblical one) was one of the most active in the Greek
intellectual integration.
> "Plato is the essential Buddha-seeker who appears again and again in
> each generation, moving onward and upward toward the 'one'." ZAMM
> (P331)
At Plato's time the intellectual thrust was still at an primitive stage
with IDEAS the highest entity, only with Aristotle can we see the
SOM taking form.
> "...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)
If we view Phaedrus of ZMM through the MOQ, we see that even
though he is at SOM (intellect) he prefers Plato to Aristotle for the
very reason that with Plato it was still an Aretê endeavor but - as
it says below - he came to realize that the Aretê Plato pursued
encapsuled into the static Intellectual Good, while his own goal
was to make it dynamic again ....yet, nothing can remain dynamic
so it "stabilized" as the MOQ!
> "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)
Exactly!
> "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)
Ditto!
> "The physical order of the universe is also the moral order of the
> universe. RTA is both. This was exactly what the MOQ was claiming. It
> was not a new idea. It was the oldest idea known to man. This
> identification of RTA and ARETE was enormously valuable, Phaedrus
> thought, because it provided a huge historical panorama in which the
> fundamental conflict between static and Dynamic Quality had been
> worked out. It answered the question of why ARETE meant ritual. RTA
> also meant ritual. But unlike the Greeks, the Hindus in their many
> thousands of years of cultural evolution had paid enormous attention
> to the conflict between ritual and freedom. Their resolution of this
> conflict in the Buddhist and Vedantist philosophies is one of the
> profound achievements of the human mind."
I have discussed this unto exhaustion with Paul so let it rest.
> Bo wrote:
> ...the mystical experience may be called experiencing DQ (in moqish)
> but any
> established religion is - as said - social-value-patterned. There is a
> scale where the Semitic kind is most conservative (social) to the said
> Buddhism but regardless they never cross the line into Intellect.
> Blurring this line is to remove all explanatory power from the MOQ.
> dmb replies:
> Again, I disagree. I think this is another logical impossibility. If
> DQ is the central reality of the MOQ and DQ is the mystical reality,
> the the MOQ is a mystical metaphysical system.
Yes, this is the very point: The MOQ is no intellectual "pattern". It
began as one, but grew too big for its intellectual nest!
> So the MOQ itself is both mystical and intellectual.
We agree in a funny way. Intellect is a static level and could not
contain the dynamic/mystic component of the MOQ (why it must
be seen as a level beyond) while MOQ's intellectual component
is its inevitable intellectual heritage. Just like intellect has a social
component ..and society a biological ...etc.
> This is the most glaring example of
> religious issues being treated at the intellectual level.
Do you mean that if people SPEAK and THINK they are treating
things intellectually? With this "lead balloon" argument it's no
wonder you have joined Paul ;-).
> 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."
Right, regardless how "dynamic" and spiritual an established
religion gets, it is SOCIAL value.
> "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 religious
> 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."
I'm not sure how this last pertains to our debate, but more than
enough is said.
IMO
Bo
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