[MD] Boromir's Journey

[John Carl]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 5:58 PM, Matt Kundert
<pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com>wrote:

Matt:
> Yeah, but that the slogan "up with perfecting, down with
> perfection!" is exactly the point is where I wonder,



but dude, it'd be like, the perfect slogan.




> and
> where my quibbles and explorations occur.



Well good then.  I enjoy good quibble and explorations.




>  I think myself,
> gav, Steve, you, Pirsig, James, Royce (I take it) would all
> sign on to such a slogan--it appears like that would be the
> common ground.


  B-O-R-I-N-G.

People complain about argumentation and dissent, but there is nothing quite
so tedious as a big group of people all in agreement.  What's to talk about
then?

ick




> But there's a difference: Royce is an
> Absolute Idealist.  What could that "Absolute" mean, if
> everything is in process?


Absolute as in morality as the fundamental metaphysic of existence.
 Absolute as in there being such an "everything is in process".

If you really untangle Royce, in his own words, I think you'd see like me
that his Absolute was identical in a perennial fashion as Pirsig's.  The
deeper I delve into both, the more I find.

James and Royce had tremendous influence upon each other, as only lifelong
friend/adversaries colleagues can experience.   I think (so far) that the
key difference - which is of absolue relevance to the moq, was captured by
the quote I offered recently of Royce's explanation of the reality
experience -


The Reality Experience!   Coming soon to a non-theater near you!

"We can make this state of affairs intelligible only if we assume that the
World of Description does not characterise the real; and we must also
suppose that our seemingly isolated and momentary appreciative
consciousnesses do share in the organic life of one self in which everyone
experiences the consciousness of everyone else. Appreciation is the reality
of what is infinite and could not exist without its higher corollary:"

Here, I'd say "Appreciation is the same as "DQ".  Because there is that
"quality" which impresses itself upon us and upon others, that we term
quality because we recognize it when we experience it.

But.... and this is the key.  The phenemona do not arise of their own accord
and present themselves "as they really are".  This is where James and Royce
went different paths.  James wanted no preconceptions, trying to build his
concrete out of air.  but Royce asserts that fundamental reality is possible
only as an instant of fundamental value - and what you get when you ignore
fundamental value is more than the the mere death of all intellectual
patterning, you get that great bugaboo of mankind - a values vacuum.

And since nature abhors a vacuum, pretty quick some unconscious motivation
rushes in to fill the void, and you got an unconscious metaphysics on your
hands.

ick.

if there is anything I hate, it's an unconscious metaphysics





> The particular inflections
> philosophers make are important, just like the quibbling
> between "faith" and "hope," or with whether use of the
> system metaphor in enunciating your philosophy is a big
> deal or not, or whether pragmatists need to be
> concurrently mystics or else fall into relativism.
>
>
mysticism is ultimately unsatisfying.  I wouldn't want to go there.  Neither
did Pirsig, neither did Royce.

I think my main evasion of mysticism for the MoQ is that Quality might be
indefinable, but it IS experiencable.  I feel that takes it out of the realm
of mystics and puts it in the realm of pragmatism, while exhibiting
perfectly the inadequacies of language to describe reality definitively.

Absolute Pragmatism.




> I see Royce's particular brand of Hegelianism the same
> way I see faith as opposed to hope--largely good, but I
> think we can do better in the long run.
>
>
a bit ago I did post a response to dmb about this topic, In Royce's own
words:

"As to certain metaphysical opinions which are stated, in outline, in the
second volume of this book, I now owe much more to our great and unduly
neglected American logician, Mr. Charles Peirce, than I do to the common
tradition of recent idealism, and certainly very much more than I ever have
owed, at any point of my own philosophical development, to the doctrines
which... can be justly attributed to Hegel.  It is time, I think, that the
long customary, but unjust and loose usage of the adjective "Hegelian"
should be dropped.  The genuinely Hegelian views were the ones stated by
Hegel himself and by his early followers.


One of the most thoughtful and one of the fairest of the reviewers of my
Spirit of Modern Philosophy said of my former position, as stated, in 1892,
that I then came nearer to being a follower of Schopenhauer than a disciple
of Hegel.  As far as it went, this statement gave a just impression of how I
then stood.  I have never, since then, been more of an Hegelian than at that
time I was.   I am now less so than ever  before."



Also, Bruce Kuklick, disparages the idea as I quoted and you responded to in
another post:


"... we have been told that to trace the story of American thought is to
trace a peculiar version of experimental Anglo-American empiricism from
Peirce, to James to Dewey;
If we wish to examine a secondary theme, we may examine the Hegelian Royce
who stands outside this tradition, influence by German thought, the leading
expositor of a different philosophic style, absolute idealism.

This picture is wrong not merely in detail but in principle.  I have
indicated that the Cambridge pragmatists--Royce among them--were part of a
major philosophical movement.  Their pragmatism is a form of neo-Kantianism
which draws from a set of connected doctrines..."

------

So, anytime I hear Royce disparaged as Hegelian, I pound on 'em.


Faith and hope?  I want to think about that a bit more... I may have a bit
to say on that distinction, before winter sets in.

John