[MD] Existence precedes essense

[Ham Priday]

Hi David, Marsha --



DMB says:
> Dr. Patricia Curd, my philosophy professor in college,
> had a sign on the door to her office that humorously and
> very briefly described the history of Philosophy.
> If memory serves, it went something like this,...
>
> Plato: "To be is to do."
> Sartre: "To do is to be."
> Sinatra: "Do be do be do."
>
> And if she's right, as she said in the first day's introductory
> lecture to her course on the topic, "existentialism is not a
> philosophy. It's a mood."

I beg to differ with your professor.  While Sartre's novel "Nausea" and the
play "No Exit" are cast in a somber mood, and the existentialist perspective
of man is certainly depressing, his views had more influence on 20th century
literature, art, and even science than any other philosopher I can name.
(Not that this is a measure of philosophical quality.)

> As I understand the MOQ, existentialism is basically one of the
> symptoms of a disease called SOM. Or more generously, its part
> of an historical process; the transition from Christian civilization
> to a scientific, secular society has generated a sense of meaninglessness,
> emptiness, uprootedness. Call it what you will. Existentialism is part
> of the grieving process, I guess. You know, since God died and all that.

Inasmuch as you consider SOM a disease (based on the MOQ), I can understand
your not wanting to take existentialism seriously.  But if, as you say, the
transition to secularism is responsible for society's sense of
meaninglessness, how do you see that malady remedied by the MOQ?
Personally, talking about betterness as High Quality does nothing to lift my
spirits or put meaning in my life.  Nor does the need to assign everything
to its proper level in the quality heirarchy.

I thought you and Marsha might like to read a sample of Sartre's writings on
Consciousness, since this appears to be the main issue of controversy in
these discussions.  I think you'll see that Sartre is not really a dualist,
but what might be called a "transphenomenalist"; that is, he takes Kant's
noumenon to mean "ontic" or pure being, and consciousness to mean its
revealed "appearance" (in the Hegelian sense).  If there is a transcendent
essence in Sartre's philosophy, it is "being beyond becoming" which, of
course, is beyond experience.  Pirsig might relate this to DQ beyond the
static levels, which is also (as I understand it) beyond experience.  (But
I'll leave such speculation to the MOQ authorities.)

"Consciousness is a being whose existence posits its essence, and inversely
it is consciousness of a being, whose essence implies its existence; that
is, in which appearance lays claim to being. Being is everywhere...We must
understand that this being is no other than the transphenomenal being of
phenomena and not a noumenal being which is hidden behind them...It requires
simply that the being of that which appears does not exist only in so far as
it appears. The transphenomenal being of what exists for consciousness is
itself in itself.... Consciousness is the revealed-revelation of existents,
and existents appear before consciousness on the foundation of their
being...Consciousness can always pass beyond the existent, not toward its
being, but toward the meaning of this being. A fundamental characteristic of
its transcendence is to transcend the ontic toward the ontological. The
meaning of the being of the existent in so far as it reveals itself to
consciousness is the phenomenon of being...This elucidation of the meaning
of being is valid only for the being of the phenomenon....For being is the
being of becoming and due to this fact it is beyond becoming. It is what it
is. This means that by itself it can not even be what it is not...It is full
positivity. It knows no otherness; it never posits itself as
other-than-another-being. It can support no connection with the other. It is
itself indefinitely and it exhausts itself in being...Consciousness
absolutely can not derive from anything, either from another being, or from
a possibility, or from a necessary law. Uncreated, without reason for being,
without any connection with another being, being-in-itself is de trop for
eternity."   -- [Sartre: Being and Nothingness, 1943]

After examining this exhausting paragraph myself, I realize that I've
borrowed a few Sartrean terms and descriptions in my own thesis; but then
such expressions as "It knows no otherness", "It is what it is,"
"uncreated', "full positivity", "existents", and "other-than" have been used
by other philosophers arguing for very different ontological conclusions.

Your comments and interest are appreciated.  I hope there will be more from
both of you

Regards,
Ham