[MD] Existence precedes essense

[david buchanan]

dmb said:
...my philosophy professor in college ...said, "existentialism is not a 
philosophy. It's a mood."

Ham replied:
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.)

dmb says:
I don't think my prof meant to say that existentialism lacked merit or that 
it had no influence. Its just that there are radical differences among 
existentialist, many of whom wouldn't even accept the label. Some 
"existentialists" existed before the label was invented. There are 
Christians and atheists, Marxists and Nazis, and all sorts of wildly 
incompatible perspectives that can all rightly be called existentialist. The 
fact that we also see it in literature and pop culture adds to the idea that 
existentialism is not a philosophical movement per se. Its more like the 
philosophical expression of a wider cultural and historical movement.

Ham said to dmb:
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? ...

dmb says:
That's a mighty big queston so I'll just sketch out the short answer. First 
of all, lots and lots of thinkers are talking about this same disease even 
if they don't call it SOM. (Subject/Object Metaphysics) Pirsig's labels such 
as SOM or "amoral scientific objectivity", as he sometimes calls it, 
basically refer to his diagnosis of the problem. And if the root cause of 
the problem is seen to be the underlying metaphysical assumptions, then the 
solution will be found in overturning those assumptions. The root cause, he 
says, comes from the fact that the existing assumptions leave morality out 
of the picture. Or rather, they are relegated into the realm of the merely 
subjective. Or, as Case put it, there is no meaning in the natural order so 
we have to invent our own. Modern scientific objectivity is what killed God, 
more or less. But, as Pirsig points out, we threw the baby out with the 
bathwater. So the solution is to show a way out of this, not to accept a 
meaningless existence in the face of an absurd universe, but to attack the 
assumptions that led us to see things this way in the first place. The MOQ's 
solution, then, rests on that copernican revolution, where subjects and 
objects are seen as products of experience rather than the pre-requisites 
for experience. And rationality is expanded, empiricism is expanded, the 
very concept of morality is enlarged and the whole SOM thing is generally 
set into a larger context. (As opposed to throwing it away entirely.) Unlike 
existentialism, the MOQ says reality is nothing but meaningful. We invented 
the whole thing. All of reality is a moral order. That, my non-Pirsig 
reading friend, is a very different picture.

And I like to think that the MOQ sort of shows how the death of God is 
actually a very good thing. The MOQ is a form of philosophical mysticism, 
which is a pretty fine way to keep the baby and yet still get rid of that 
nasty old bathwater. (It has bits of baby poop in it) What "died" is the 
theistic concept of God as a supernatural creator guy in the sky or any kind 
of actual entity. Like lots of other thinker's, Pirsig's MOQ says that there 
really is something going on there, that traditional religion refers to 
something, refers to something and if you look past all the bullshit or 
"low-grade yelping about God",....

Ham continued:
...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.

dmb says:
Um, I don't think a metaphysical system is supposed to lift your spirits or 
put meaning in your life. For the first, I would suggest a good comedy show, 
maybe a Bill Hicks album. For the latter, if you want something to PUT 
meaning into you life, you might want to join a cult. Or become a 
Republican. But seriously, Pirsig's work is aimed at solving a cultural 
problem. It effects everybody and so it really can seem to help. People 
claim that his books have changed their lives and all that, but as I tried 
to explain above, I think we're talking about a large historical process 
that has effected the Western World for many generations. Likewise, the 
hierarchy of the MOQ can be used to frame and examine specific ethical 
questions, but that is also a part of the solution insofar as it is used to 
make sense of much larger conflicts, wars, political movements and the like.

Ham said:
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.)

dmb says:
As I understand it, there is nothing outside of experience. How could there 
be? And if there was, how could anybody possibly know anything about it? 
Sorry, but this sort of stuff really, really bugs me. Being beyond becoming? 
What the heck is that supposed to mean? Sounds like something somebody just 
made up out of sheer speculation. And the whole idea of disputing the idea 
that humans arrive in this world with a ready-made essence or purpose or 
meaning or whatever has always struck me as quite ridiculous. I mean, OF 
COURSE we aren't born with a predetermined goal or purpose. How would that 
work?!? Isn't that just religion in disguise?

I'm really starting to think that Western philosophy is just a bunch of 
cranky dudes trying to exorcise their childhood Catholicism.

Ham quoted Sartre:
>"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]

dmb says:
I have no idea what any of this means. To my eyes, this is some kind of 
cruel parody or the work of an absurdist with a sadistic streak. He's used 
the word "being" a couple dozen times in this paragraph, but I still have no 
idea what he means by it.

Now, I've heard that Sartre's ideas are strongly influenced by Heidegger. 
And I've been told that Heidegger's "Being" (with a capital "B") is similar 
to Pirsig's DQ, but I've never seen how that works. I guess that's a 
question I've been hoping David Morey would provide. I'd like to see some 
quotes from Heidegger's work side by side with some Pirsigisms on DQ. I've 
read some Heidegger and, like Sartre's work, it strikes me as some kind of 
hoax. I'm not the only one either. Apparently, lots of professional academic 
types think this sort of thing is a bunch of incomprehensible nonsense and 
actual hoaxes have been perpetrated in an effort of expose their 
pretentions.

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