[MD] Absolute Truth

[david buchanan]

Matt and all:

DMB said:
...It seems that you're really talking about God and the history of 
misinterpertation you refer to is basically the history of Christian 
theology. But this is just a hunch.

Matt replied:
...You're not far off with the God connection.  Since Descartes philosophers 
have been secularizing philosophy to exclude mention of God in the equation. 
   But Heidegger suspected the same thing you do and called "metaphysics" 
both "Platonism" and "the onto-theological tradition". ...These are all 
suggestions that post-Enlightenment, secular philosophers are smuggling God 
back in after they got rid of Him.  So I'm kinda' talking about God, except 
that the claim is that philosophers are smuggling God back in without 
knowing.  That they rejected God, but not all the things God did for us. 
That rejecting God meant getting rid of the security blanket (what Nietzsche 
called metaphysical comfort), but philosophers keep dreaming up new security 
blankets...

dmb says:
Ka-Ching, Ka-Ching, Ka-Ching! This explanation not only confirms my hunch, 
it fits quite nicely with just about everything I understand about the 
intellectual history of the West. It comports with the reality I inhabit. 
And it answers my long standing question; "The Absolute Truth? What in the 
world is that?" Thank you very much. Seriously. As far as I understand the 
MOQ, this is definately a dead horse. The MOQ is anti-Theistic and rejects 
Hegalian Absolutes and even Eastern concepts like Nothingness in favor of a 
much more ordinary, this-worldly thing; Quality.

I suppose the only thing that could reasonably be construed as an Absolute 
of any kind would be DQ, especially when people like me start talking about 
mysticism. Its not unusual to think of Plato's "One" in terms of God or 
Christ just as Rorty did. And so that's why I say it would be reasonable to 
suspect that the MOQ is sneaking God in through the back door too. But I do 
think it would be a mistake to read Pirsig that way. I guess a lot of what I 
do here, when trying to explain how DQ just ain't the same as Jesus, is a 
way of trying to show how Pirsig ISN'T trying to sneak anything 
"metaphysical" into his metaphysics. And of course I'd like to find a way of 
getting rid of your suspicions on that account. I'd like to persuade you 
that there are no such glimmers.

Matt continued:
That, in fact, is what I see in an Enlightenment-esque social/intellectual 
distinction--I see God being smuggled back in...

dmb says:
You see God being smuggled into the MOQ by way of its social/intellectual 
distinction? How so?  I think its based on empirical evidence, which is why 
I make all the fuss about a pluralistic epistemology, history, mythology and 
all that.

Matt qualified the comments above:
(Oh, just so I'm not mistook for willy-nilly trashing God and Christians and 
such, which DMB may be fine with, I'm not suggesting that believing in God 
is automatically bad news--there are many verisions of religions and God 
(and believers) that are fine.)

dmb says:
Hmmm. I think philosophical mysticism is a religion in some sense of the 
word and its a view that allows us to have a spirituality without a theistic 
God involved, but I wonder how you would make a distinction between 
"versions of religions and God that are fine"? I mean, its clear to me how a 
philosophical mystic (A broad category including the core of all the Great 
religions) can do this, but I don't see how this can be done otherwise.

Matt said:
...Let me emphasize that I don't know a lot about Bloom or Strauss, but I 
was under the impression that both Bloom and Strauss were throw-back 
Platonists who believed that philosophers could reach the Truth (dare I 
say...Absolute Truth) and that, therefore, we should have philosopher-kings 
(or, ya' know, along those basic lines).

dmb says:
I've been reading about the Straussian since I heard about THE POWER OF 
NIGHTMARES a few weeks ago, but don't know much either. Your description 
seems about right. But their Platonism is actually not at odds with my 
accusation that the Straussians favored asserting an unbelievable myth. The 
myths were intended for everybody else,  for the masses to believe. 
Asserting unbelievable beliefs was a quasi-Machiavellian political move, 
while the real "Truth" was reserved for philosophers.

Matt said:
If you want to see where almost all of the biographical source material 
about Rorty is coming from in that article, you should read the essay it 
came from at

http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/cmt/rrtwo.html.

Maybe it'll give you better perspective on why you dislike Rorty.)

dmb says:
I printed it out and hope to take a look before next weekend. Thanks.

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