[MF] Is the pinnacle of human experience a rational or irrational thing?

[Michael Hamilton]

Hi Kevin,

I found your post interesting, mainly because you seem to have reacted
to Pirsig's writings in almost a completely opposite way to how I
reacted. I don't agree that the MOQ categorises "things intellectual
as the pinnacle of man's experience", because the utterly brilliant
thing about Pirsig's metaphysics is that it states that there is much,
much more to man's experience than SQ. Intellectual patterns of
quality might be the pinnacle of SQ (for the time being, anyway), but
they are certainly not the pinnacle of man's experience. I think  one
of the implications of DQ is that it is impossible to define precisely
the pinnacle of man's experience.

I'm not sure how you've construed that Pirsig emphasises only rational
or intellectual quality. I see him as having quite a strong
anti-intellectual bias, especially in ZMM. What makes ZMM so
interesting for me is that, despite his anti-intellectualism, his mind
is nonetheless strongly predisposed to intellectualisation and classic
quality. It's a fascinating contradiction, and it may explain why you
see him as excluding the non-rational. The way I see it, Pirsig did
rely mostly on rational _methods_, but in doing so, he was using
rationality to bring rationality down to its proper place. He laid
down the rational groundwork for a more inclusive discussion of those
non-rational qualities you mentioned.

Regards,
Mike

On 1/9/06, Kevin Perez <juan825diego at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   One thing about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that disappoints me is its
>   overemphasis on the rational and the intellectual.  This approach leaves out whole
>   areas of human experience, namely faith, hope and love.  The following quote from
>   ZMM demonstrates this.
>
>        "Phædrus' mad pursuit of the rational, analytic and therefore technological
>        meaning of the word "Quality" was really a pursuit of the answer to the whole
>        problem of technological hopelessness. So it seems to me, anyway.  So I backed
>        up and shifted to the classic-romantic split that I think underlies the whole
>        humanist-technological problem. But that too required a backup into the meaning
>        of Quality.  But to understand the meaning of Quality in classic terms required a
>        backup into metaphysics and its relationship to everyday life. To do that required
>        still another backup into the huge area that relates both metaphysics and everyday
>        life...namely, formal reason. So I proceeded with formal reason up into
>        metaphysics and then into Quality and then from Quality back down into
>        metaphysics and science.  Now we go still further down from science into
>        technology, and I do believe that at last we are where I wanted to be in the first
>        place."
>
>   This quote also captures the essence of the Metaphysics of Quality and its
>   categorization of things intellectual as the pinnacle of man's experience.
>
>   The following two quotes, also from ZMM, explain more than just the source of Pirsig's
>   pathology.  They explain why the non-rational, high country of human experience,
>   faith, hope and love, are not developed in the MOQ.
>
>        "[...] the English faculty at Bozeman, informed of their squareness, presented him
>        with a reasonable question: "Does this undefined `quality' of yours exist in the
>        things we observe?" they asked. "Or is it subjective, existing only in the observer?"
>
>        "Why he chose to disregard this advice and chose to respond to this dilemma
>        logically and dialectically rather than take the easy escape of mysticism, I don't
>        know. But I can guess. I think first of all that he felt the whole Church of Reason
>        was irreversibly in the arena of logic, that when one put oneself outside logical
>        disputation, one put oneself outside any academic consideration whatsoever.
>        Philosophical mysticism, the idea that truth is indefinable and can be apprehended
>        only by nonrational means, has been with us since the beginning of history. It's the
>        basis of Zen practice. But it's not an academic subject. The academy, the Church
>        of Reason, is concerned exclusively with those things that can be defined, and if
>        one wants to be a mystic, his place is in a monastery, not a University.
>        Universities are places where things should be spelled out.  I think a second
>        reason for his decision to enter the arena was an egoistic one. He knew himself to
>        be a pretty sharp logician and dialectician, took pride in this and looked upon this
>        present dilemma as a challenge to his skill. I think now that trace of egotism may
>        have been the beginning of all his troubles."
>
>   I see in this explanation the reason why the MOQ has its present delineation.  The elevation of man's intellect above all else has an egoistic motivation.  Pirsig's pursuit
>   of quality seems to have been one-sided, ending only with explanation of rational
>   quality.
>
>   Any thoughts?
>
>
>   Kevin Perez
>
>
>
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