[MD] Perennial Philosophy vs. empirical truth

[Ham Priday]

Greetings Adrie, Platt and All --

According to Karl Jaspers:

"Despite the wide variety of philosophical thought, despite all the 
contradictions and mutually exclusive claims to truth, there is in all 
philosophy a One, which no man possesses but about which all serious efforts 
have at all times gravitated: the one eternal philosophy, the philosophia 
perennis."

Like other philosophers, Bob Pirsig set out to prove that Aldous Huxley was 
right that "the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to 
the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the 
soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic 
that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and 
transcendent Ground of all being; the thing is immemorial and 
versal."    --Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy [1945].

The leading question in philosophy is not "What are things-in-themselves?" 
or "What is the nature of the universe?".  Rather, it's "Why is the True 
Reality hidden from us?  Clearly, what we know as "truth" is a principle or 
axiom that applies consistently to empirical existence; yet, empirical truth 
does not reveal ultimate truth, that is, if you agree with Pirsig that 
Huxley was right.  The solution to this dilemma won't be found by making an 
empirical truth, like cause-and-effect, the law of energy conservation, or 
the experience of quality or morality the "true reality", because empirical 
truth is relative, whereas ultimate truth is absolute.

After seven decades of pondering this dilemma, I'm convinced that there is 
but one plausible answer:  We do not KNOW the Absolute Source as Truth 
because our experience is excluded from it.  Existence and everything in it 
is what Heidegger called "appearances" and Pirsigians call "patterns".  None 
of these existents -- not even the observer who experiences them or the 
value that actualizes them -- is fundamental or absolute.

Ultimate Reality is inaccessible to man because the individual is a finite 
being, or as Cusa reasoned, "an other" in the presence of the "not-other". 
The not-other postulated as Cusa's 'First Principle' is the absolute 
'Essence' of Essentialism.  It is only by objectivizing the Value of Essence 
as "relational beingness" that man becomes the free agent of Value, or as 
Pirsig would say, "the cutting edge of reality".

If the brilliant author of Lila had the metaphysical insight to realize the 
significance of Cusa's logic, would we have been spared the endless
debate over Static and Dynamic Quality and which is the "true reality"?

I happen to think so.

Essentially speaking,
Ham

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

> Andrie,
>
> I'm not into philosophology, but have read and found
> interesting Ken Wilber who subscribes to the perennial
> philosophy big time. However, like the inhabitants of
> most philosophy departments, Wilber is an S/O devotee.
>Only Pirsig stands above the crowd with a full-fledged
> non-S/O metaphysics. Like the Pueblo Indian's hostility
> towards the brujo, it will take awhile for the academic
> clan to catch on and catch up.
>
> Regards,
> Platt

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Fam. Kintziger-Karaca wrote:

> Greetings , group.Platt;
>
> As i saw , in one of your earlier postings , Platt, you're probably
> a Huxley reader.
> Something caught my attention, in the copleston annotations.
> this: Quote Pirsig
> "So It has really been a shock to see how close Bradley is
> to the MOQ.  Both he and the MOQ are expressing what
> Aldous Huxley called "The Perennial Philosophy," which is
> perennial, I believe, because it happens to be true. Bradley
> has given an excellent description of what the MOQ calls
> Dynamic Quality and an excellent rational justification for
> its intellectual acceptance.  It and the MOQ can be spliced
> together with no difficulty into a broader explanation of the
> same thing." ...

Adrie