[MD] Perennial Philosophy vs. empirical truth

[Joseph Maurer]

On 5/26/10 11:19 AM, "Ham Priday" <hampday1 at verizon.net> wrote:

> 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."

Hi Ham and all,

I know that 1 is necessary for mathematics, and there is no doubt of the
goodies that mathematics has created for us. I do think that evolution
defines 1 here and there.  Hope springs eternal in the human beast.

> 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].
> 
Are you equating DQ with a divine reality?  I don't think that is a correct
understanding of what Pirsig meant by DQ.  I use DQ as a affirmation that
there is a lot I don't know.

> 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.
>
How would you know that a suspected reality is true, if it is hidden?  I
would think that truth follows evolution for an answer rather than an
absolute ultimate truth.

> 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.
> 
Logic is a strange tool.  "The Absolute Source" sounds like a contradiction,
since "Source" indicates "a beginning," and "Absolute" is without
restriction.

> 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".
> 
It is difficult for me to see the logic in a negation "not-other" becoming
absolute Essence? If negation is eliminated, it seems that affirmation is
also eliminated, and imagination is not a trustworthy source.

> 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.

Endless debate on a difficult subject at least gives me a feeling that I am
trying to understand!

Joe

> 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
> 
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