[MD] Royce's Absolute, conclusion

[david buchanan]

John said to dmb:
Are you starting to understand how Royce's Absolute is Direct Experience, or DQ, yet dave?


dmb replies:

The stuff you quoted from John McDermott seemed quite compelling and challenging to me and so you're more likely to convince me with more thought along those lines.

But here, you've only provided reasons NOT to equate Royce's Absolute with DQ. I think you were quoting Royce when you wrote, "this supposed universal knowing consciousness, this "not ourselves" has, under the conditions stated, all the essential characteristics of a real world.  It is beyond us; it is independent of us; its facts have a certain correspondence to our sensations."
Now compare this idea of a universal knowing consciousness that is beyond us and independent of us to the idea of direct everyday experience. This notion of a universal consciousness is what Pirsig is talking at the end of chapter 29, when he says that Quality "is not some intellectualized Hegelian Absolute. It is direct everyday experience." Those two things are very different and what you're offering here as equivalent to direct everyday experience is just such an Absolute. It doesn't have to be Hegel's version or come out of Hegel's mouth for it to be objectionable. We can see this in the description you've provided. Look at that Royce quote and ask yourself some questions. 
In what sense can direct experience be equated with a universal knowing consciousness? (The former is an empirical fact while the latter is a metaphysical entity created by logic but is not known in experience as such.) In what sense is direct everyday experience "not ourselves"? In what sense is direct experience independent of us or beyond us? Pirsig's Quality is called the primary empirical reality and the cutting edge of experience. I don't see how this kind of immediate experience can reasonably be characterized as transcendent or independent of us in any way. Pirsig is talking about the experience of actual people. Royce is talking about something "not ourselves". The incompatibility of these two ideas is obvious, don't you think? 



 		 	   		  
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