[MD] Absolute Truth

[Matt Kundert]

DMB,

DMB said:
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:
That pretty much sums up our different stances to Pirsig.  I see glimmers, 
you don't.  We, for the most part, agree on who the devil is, we just 
disagree somewhat on what he dresses like.  I'd _like_ to think that Pirsig 
isn't smuggling, I'd like to think it a mistake, but when I try periodically 
to read him that way, I'm tripped up and stopped.  I trip on Pirsig and I 
trip on the interpretation you put forward.  I've come to think that perhaps 
Pirsig takes different consequences from his flight from the devil, which is 
another way of summarizing our differences.  I'm still not sure, but there 
are still things I find in Pirsig that don't make sense or add up.

DMB said:
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:
I think Paul Tillich did it.  John Dewey, too.  I think Whitehead's 
definition of religion as "what we do with our aloneness" sums it up.

Matt

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