[MD] Pragmatism and Philosophical Mysticism

[david buchanan]

Howdy MOQers:
I've started a new thread but it is a response to John's post about the state of academic philosophy and Gav's post about religion and spirituality. As you know, I'm in the process of trying to make a case for philosophical mysticism within the confines of academic philosophy and so those two issues are all of a piece for me. This is so closely related to what I'm doing at school that this post practically constitutes a dress rehearsal for this week's homework assignment. Basically, we're supposed to write a three page explanation of our thesis. What is your claim and why does it matter?

Nobody around here will be surprised to learn that my thesis will claim what Pirsig claims. "Quality is nature", he says, and "there is no spiritual principle in man that makes knowledge possible. Nature does the whole job." This "is an atheistic outlook" wherein "no faith is required because there is no way you can disbelieve that there is such a thing as quality." This sounds worse than it is, though. This atheistic - even anti-theistic - stance also forms the basis of a natural mysticism. "Dynamic Quality", or "pure experience" as James puts it, is the pre-intellectual or pre-conceptual experience is something every infant knows, it is something which we always already constantly rely upon in everyday experience AND it the undifferentiated consciousness of the mystic who's achieved at-one-ment with the universe. This unitive mystical experience has been known and reported from all times and places and it is the seed germ of every great religion on earth. Well, I don't think I'll try to defend that last line, exactly, but Huxley's notion of a perennial philosophy will definitely get some treatment. 

This is the position I've been defending around here for quite some time. I don't believe it or defend it just because Pirsig said it, of course. I defend it because I think it's true. I think it's a good way to have depth and meaning without losing science or rationality. I think it's a way to expand and improve science and rationality. That's really Pirsig's aim. He was to warm and moisten the cold, dry voice of reason without letting the religionist "sneak his goods in through the back door". 

It seems to me that Pirsig's position on theism is quite clear and unequivocal. And yet people are shocked and outraged when I defend that position against theistic claims. I don't just FEEL that I've been unfairly treated. It's practically a scientific fact! Whenever I make a case that the MOQ is not compatible with theism a shit storm of abuse immediately ensues wherein I am a dick, an asshole, a McCarthyite censor and a closed-minded, knee jerking arrogant monster up on his high horse. And yet I'm only saying what Pirsig says. That's unfair. He says, "the selling out of intellectual truth to the social icons of organized religion is seen by the MOQ as an evil act" and "the MOQ drops spirit and faith, cold". Yet people wonder why anyone would object when they try to appropriate Pirsig's metaphysical system into their faith. That's unfair and incorrect.


John quoted Jacoby: 
"The philosophical self-scrutiny .. may be the weakest because American philosophy has promoted technical expertise that repels critical thinking ... its fetish of logic and language has barred all but a few who might rethink philosophy. Philosophy seems the most routineized of the humanities, the least accessible to change." 

dmb says:

The fetish for logic and language that Jacoby is complaining about here refers to the methods of analytic philosophy and I share his distaste for it. I also sympathize with his complaints about technical expertise and the problems with ever narrower specialization. This is part of what I'm working against and since I'm able to do this within the system, Jacoby's complaints seem quite well founded and yet they're only true to a certain extent. Analytic philosophy is still what you have to do at about 80% of the grad schools and the rest are usually some mix of continental and analytic philosophies, with a just a few dominated almost entirely by continental schools. The program where I attend resists analytic philosophy in particular and specialization in general. The program is interdisciplinary and the degree will be a Master's of Humanities. It's a school for generalists, not specialists. Pragmatism is neither analytic nor continental and the one thing all pragmatisms have in common is that philosophy should make a practical difference in the real world. They're called meliorists. (meliorism |ˈmēlēəˌrizəm| noun Philosophy - the belief that the world can be made better by human effort.) 


That's the context in which I'll be making a case for Pirsig's natural mysticism. The program is designed so that you can't get away with taking classes in a single department. You gotta mix it up. In my case, that meant taking classes in the religious studies department to supplement the philosophy of religion course. That meant taking classes that were inherently interdisciplinary, like the one about Einstein and Picasso. It meant learning some psychology along with epistemology. And even though there is no end to the ways one can mix and match, everybody is expected to do some kind of social critique, shed light on some actual problem. I mean, the this program in general and pragmatism in particular is not an example of Jacoby's complaints, they are solutions to the problem he's identified. 


It doesn't take a subtle eye to detect the tension between science and religion in our culture. Is there some kind of philosophy that can help to sort out their opposing claims? You can't stop a suicide bomber with any kind of empiricism, of course. But the cops and armies that can stop them should be taking their orders from people who are capable of being persuaded by reasons and evidence. And if religious differences can be overcome by showing that they share a common central core, maybe the heat will get turned down some and fewer people will die. Maybe it'll be easier to view other religions with tolerance, be easier to see which religious institutions which foster growth in a healthy way and which ones breed division and hate. And if it can be shown that this claim about the central core is empirically based maybe guys like Dawkins will realize that religion isn't always as childish as he thinks. 


In short, I think we need a natural, empirically based mysticism because science is inhuman and religion is stupid. It's not the science or religion that bothers me so much as the inhumanity and the stupidity. Given a choice, I want neither. I think that James and Pirsig give us neither.



 		 	   		  
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