[MD] Perennial Philosophy vs. empirical truth

[John Carl]

Ham, Adrie and Joseph,

I just have one main comment on this thread:

Pirsig rails against various Idealistic intellectual formulations for pages
and pages of Copleston Annotation and then concludes with an astounding
reversal in his analysis of Bradley and calls Bradley's philosophy
"Perennial" by which I take it he  meant "allied".

 Thus Pirsig's avowal of Bradley's Absolute Idealism opens the way for Ham's
Absolute Essence as compatible with the MoQ, which points to a problem for
fans of Willy James as James is consistently scathing of Bradley.

So if the enemy of my ally is my ally... Hadn't I better go back to the
drawing board and think my knee-jerk rejections through a bit more?

Nah.  Thinking is hard work.  Why think when there's the SEP and wiki to do
my thinking for me?   It's almost as hard to think straight as it is to read
Heidegger!

Adrie, you mentioned some interest in pursuing this train of thought.  A
good overview of Royce's analysis of Bradley, and his four conceptions of
being, can be found here <http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/royce.html>.