[MD] Marsha's (s)OL

[Ham Priday]

Dear Platt --


> There are lots of words defined in the dictionary whose meanings
> are obscure because they they are rarely used. I take it as a general
> principle in writing that one prefer the simple to the complex, the
> familiar to the strange. Thus, 'contraiety" might better be expressed
> as "opposed" or "in opposition," "differential otherness" as "separate,"
> and "negated entities" as -- well, I don't have an inkling of what that
> means. Maybe at death one becomes a "negated entity?" As for ". . .
> it's the concepts not the words which make a philosophy," unless
> the words have meaning for the reader the philosophy and its
> concepts will remain forever on a shelf gathering dust.

Touché.  I'd rather have you disagreeing with me than continually confounded 
by my obtuseness.
Platt, the word is spelled with another 'r' ("contrariety"), and it means 
"oppositional or contradictory in form," as you have gathered.  Existence is 
also oppositional in its dynamics, manifesting both staticity and change, 
genesis and entropy, activity and passivity, expansion and contraction, 
anabolism and catabolism, etc.  And relationally differentiated experience 
(empirical knowledge) is all we really know.

The concept of "negation" is rooted in the precept that an absolute can only 
create an "other" by denying some aspect of itself.  An analogy I use is 
that of the mountain-climber who has ascended to the summit and can only 
proceed by descent.  In other words, existence is "reductional" rather than 
an "addition" to absolute Essence.  As Cusa put it, the first principle is 
the 'not-other' from which all otherness is negated.  Entities are therefore 
'negates' estranged or separated from the primary source.
[Ham]:
> Absolute Essence is not an "experience"; it transcends experience.
> What you experience "in the presence of great beauty" is
> differentiated value.

[Platt]:
> After I put the experience into words, the value I experience
> becomes hardened into the proverbial finger pointing at the moon.
> But, there's nothing "differentiated" about the value experience
> itself prior to thought.

Prior to thought (or intellection) there is no experience but sensibility. 
I concluded some time ago that Pirsig's notion of "pure, pre-intellectual 
experience" is epistemically flawed, which makes value-realization 
incomprehensible in the cognitive sense.  For that reason, I refer to pure 
(undifferentiated) value as Sensibility, as distinguished from Experience 
which is always relational.  Experience is, indeed, "the cutting edge of 
reality," as Pirsig says, but it's the reality of Existence, not DQ or 
Essence.  I think this is where my communication problems with the 
Pirsigians begins.  The autonomous agent of Value is not itself Value 
(Quality) or a "pattern of" Value; the agent is individuated Sensibility, 
otherwise known as subjective awareness.  Regrettably, Mr. Pirsig has all 
but rejected proprietary awareness in his zeal to "overcome" subject/object 
duality.

Platt, I sincerely believe that if you will open your mind to the 
self-evident truth that all experience is differentiated and relational, and 
acept the metaphysical principle that "from unity comes diversity", you will 
have little difficulty understanding my philosophy.

> Thanks for the suggestions. My tastes are less sophisticated than yours.
> I lean more toward Respighi's tone poems and Tchaikovsky's ballet
> music. Similarly, I'll take Norman Rockwell, Andre Wyeth and Winslow
> Homer over Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe.
> As my dear old Dad used to say, " 'There's no accounting for taste,' said
> the little old lady as she kissed the cow." As for "inexplicable
> coincidences," I find you and I meeting on this site to be one of my most
> pleasurable. It may not be beautiful, but for me it's been fun. As Pirsig
> might say, "DQ at work."

I concur with your selections, and the pleasure is mine, Platt.  I also have 
been accused of having "epicurean" tastes.  And your comments about esthetic 
tastes being subjective actually make my point that all value is realized 
individually.  When Protagoras wrote that "Man is the measure of all 
things", he was referring to the cognizant agent of Value, not to a 
collective aggregate or pattern..  Unrealized Quality or Value is a 
meaningless reification.

May I specifically recommend two musical treats that I've come to cherish in 
my golden years?  One is 'The Presentation of the Rose' sequence from 
Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier.  The second is Franz Liszt's 'A Faust 
Symphony'.  I have a superb new EMI recording of the latter by Kurt Mazur 
and the Gewandhaus Orchestra.  (The seven-disc set includes contains several 
of the composer's more familiar tone poems and piano concertos.)  But then, 
as your dad implied, I may be making love to a cow ;-).

Esthetically yours,
Ham