Binding the Dichotomy: A Reconciliation of Opposites

By Jeremiah Lewis (Prof. Lewis, please contact me.)
From a ?Virginia Tech? English webpage, no longer available = athena.english.vt.edu/25~exlibris/25essays02/25lewis.html

The differences in Western and Eastern philosophy are marked. Eastern thinking has slowly become “discovered” by the West; meanwhile, the development of Western thought and philosophy has come under close scrutiny by modern and postmodern philosophers and thinkers as being flawed at its core. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger came to the conclusion that “Western philosophy is a great error” (Barrett xi). The manner in which Western thought was founded, the course of its development, and its incursion into every facet of life in the Western world has been and is now being questioned on all fronts by leading critics and thinkers.
Robert Pirsig, in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, describes in detail the development of the Western philosophical tradition, and how it has shaped Western society. In doing so, he offers a critique of certain aspects of Western thought that resulted from a momentous battle for the “mind of man” (Pirsig 381). What came about was a fragmenting of the mind from matter, of perception from experience. In addition to outlining the history and philosophy behind Western thinking, he offers a rediscovery of the very concept that got buried under the “rubble of declining Athens” and Rome, buried deeply under the new champions of Western man: Reason, Intellect, Knowledge (Pirsig 391). Pirsig cites Thoreau in writing, “You never gain something but that you lose something” (387). This applies with direct impact to Western development. In understanding the world through “dialectic truths” man lost the ability to understand how to be part of the world, and “not an enemy of it” (Pirsig 387). However, what Pirsig writes about is not only a new way of looking at the world, but it is the only way. Although Pirsig never states it explicitly, this concept is the point of reconciliation between Eastern and Western philosophy, and indeed, its effects would be seen in every facet of life.
The idea that nature itself can be divided rationally into ordered systems is inherently Western in origin. That implies that a system of concepts exists to explain the world, the universe. The “structure of concepts” is called a hierarchy, and broken down even further, is a system of divisions, or distinctions (Pirsig 97). Pirsig asserts that this has been a “basic structure for all Western knowledge” ( 97).
How this Western way of thinking came about could be an entire Philosophy course in itself. A short explanation must be described, however, in order to make sense of the rest of this paper. According to William Barrett, what we call Western traditions in thinking really stem from two cultural backgrounds, Hebrew and Greek, both of which are “profoundly dualistic in spirit” (ix). That is, they “divide reality into two parts," setting one division off against the other (Barrett ix). The Hebrews did it on the basis of morality and religion, separating God from Creation, flesh from spirit, right from wrong. The Greeks divide along the basis of philosophical and intellectual lines. It was Plato who almost “single-handedly” established Western philosophy (Barrett ix). Plato “absolutely cleaves reality into the world of the intellect and the world of the senses” (Barrett ix). To understand the impact of this, we need to step back a little in history.
The fourth century of Greece claimed the thinking of the Sophists who, no longer concerned with the problem of Cosmology (that is, man, as a divinely created being, subject to divine laws), centered their thoughts on man as his own entity, his knowledge, and his morality. Their object, according to Pirsig, was “not any single absolute truth, but the improvement of man” (Pirsig 383). The Sophists, in abandoning the idea that all of nature (and consequently, man) were divinely instituted, stopped at the immediacy of sensory, or empirical impressions of man. Their teaching centered on the concept of aretê, which was Greek for ‘excellence’ but today is translated as ‘virtue’. Aretê was the pre-Socratic ideal, a sort of “duty toward self” (Pirsig 386), seen in Homeric myths and legends of Heroes. This aretê represented the Good. With the Sophists was born the relativism of knowledge, culminating in the “nothing exists” of Gorgias (Sprague 42). In the fragment of Protagoras preserved by Plato, it is stated that, “Man is the measure of all things, of those that are in so far as they are, and those that are not in so far as they are not” (Sprague 13). From this one gathers that reality is subjective. For instance, two bodies might differ as to the air temperature. One might say ‘it is cold’ while another might say ‘it is hot’. Both would be correct, but their reality is subjective. Hence, knowledge itself is subjective. Gorgias went on to say that if “[something does exist]," then we cannot “apprehend” it (Sprague 42). If reality is subjective to empirical data, then it does not exist at all. Such a relative view of reality was the basis of Sophist thought.
Socrates countered Sophist thinking with the notion that full knowledge was universal, underlying all human thought. He called these concepts. He arrived at this idea through use of the dialogue, from which the dialectic gets its name. What he argued against was the idea of relativistic knowledge. Phaedrus saw that Socrates was not just “expounding noble ideas," but was in reality fighting a battle with the Sophists “with everything he [had]” (Pirsig 383).
Plato, like Socrates, saw Truth as the highest Ideal, and because Knowledge was a principle of Truth, it could not be undermined by the Sophists who believed that “everything is relative”. Plato defended Socrates; defended the independence of Truth and Knowledge; he defended the superiority of Truth over Aretê. He had identified the Sophists’ teaching as ethical relativism. What his Dialogues developed is nothing less than the “whole world of Western man” (Pirsig 383).
However, the hierarchical nature of Western thought was fully developed by Aristotle, who, taking the ideas of Plato, “[invented] an endless proliferation of forms about the substantive elements of the world and [called] these forms knowledge” (Pirsig 390). Aristotle believed that knowledge was gained through categorization, and through this ordered system, experience of each entry in the category could be gained. As the Phaedrus of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance discovers, this is a compartmentalization of what Plato had taught. Plato himself saw the need for Good, but in order to resolve it to his own beliefs of Truth, he took the teaching of the Sophists and tried to turn it into an Idea, that is, an immutable, defined entity called Good. Plato’s teaching represented Truth, and as Phaedrus discovered, the Good and the Truth “were engaged in a huge struggle for the future mind of man” (Pirsig 381). It was this battle that determined the future of Western thought. Aristotle demoted Good to a “branch of ethics," Truth (or Knowledge, rationalism) won the battle, and thus, the Western way of thinking was established (Pirsig 390).
The differences between Eastern and Western thought are now very much pronounced. Western mentality is based upon a rational, ordered system of categories, defined and distinguished between, set apart by an absolute Knowledge or Truth (what we might today call Science). Eastern thought is very much in contrast with this mode, although not far different from the Sophists’ way of thinking. I would like to describe in a short space the technique of Eastern thinking, for it is just as much a ‘technique’ as it is a ‘way’.
Basic propositions of Eastern philosophy show that there is an Ultimate Reality. Hindis would call this Brahman; Buddhists name it Buddha. Taoists would call it Tao, and Star Wars fans would see it as the Force. Whatever its name, it is from this Ultimate Reality that all things flow, and ultimately originate. According to Fritjof Capra, the “essential nature of all things” is described by the term Dharmakaya ( 98). “It pervades all material things in the universe” (Capra 98). Dharmakaya, or Dharma, is a Sanskrit word meaning “one” (Pirsig 386). Interestingly, as Phaedrus discovered, arête and dharma both describe a “duty toward self”, the pre-Socratic Greek description of ‘excellence’. This is almost the exact description of the Tao. “The Tao is infinite, eternal…the great Tao flows everywhere./All things are born from it” (Mitchell 7, 34).
While the Western world is concerned with verifiable and observable reality, Orientals tend to view reality as illusory. Blatavasky writes of the “emptiness and illusionary nature of all” (Blatavasky 48). William Barrett mentions that Eastern culture has favored “intuition over reason” (Barrett ix). The mind is the reality. According to Buddha, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.”
A very established school of thought takes these concepts and reshapes them slightly. The Zen philosophy arrives at the belief of emptiness as Ultimate Reality from a different way. According to Hui-neng, self-nature is Suchness or Emptiness. “Suchness means the Absolute” and as the Absolute is “not subject to laws of relativity," it cannot be grasped (Barrett 190). That is the essence of Emptiness, which is really the Unconscious. “In the traditional terminology of Buddhism, self-nature is Buddha-nature…and also the Unconscious” (Barrett 210-211). In the Prajnaparamita and other Mahayana sutras we see that “to be unconscious in all circumstances is possible because the ultimate nature of all reality is emptiness” (Barrett 193). Thus, what Zen says is that reality, or emptiness, is achieved by the Unconscious, or as Dr. Suzuki calls it, “that which is not mind”, or “no-mind” (Barrett 212).
Now the great confrontation of Eastern and Western thinking becomes clearer. To Westerners, Eastern thinking is mystical, ethereal, concerned with illusions and metaphysical events; it seems to completely abandon the “reality” which everyone faces every day. To the West, Oriental and Indian thinking is self-destroying, because the very nature of ‘non-reality’, ‘illusory universe’, and ‘emptiness’ means that the thoughts of the aforementioned terms are themselves illusions, and not real. Then too, the Westerners ask, “if all reality is illusion, why is it so persistent and universal?”
Eastern thinkers counter this with the assertion that no-mind really refers to the “time prior to the separation of mind and world” (Barrett 219). What Pirsig calls “preintellectual awareness” seems very related to this (272). “Reality is always the moment of vision before intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality” (Pirsig 251). Eastern thought, then, is focused on eliminating the dualistic nature of ‘reality’, becoming ‘one’ with the reality that we perceive.
There are more problems. Advances in many fields of study (from a Western point of view), especially Physics and Mathematics, have revealed a disturbing fact. In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant states that “even if the whole of nature were revealed to us, we should still never be able to answer those transcendental questions which go beyond nature” (286-287). There is thus an “ineluctable limit to reason” (Barrett ix). It appears that science is still catching up to this statement. Heisenberg’s Principle states our limitations in knowing all “physical states of matter” at all times and in all conditions (Barrett x). His principle also illuminates the basic “irrational and chaotic” nature of reality (Barrett x). Gödel’s discoveries in the field of mathematics are somewhat more frightening, as mathematics has been the model of “absolute reality” since the development of Western rationality (Barrett x). What Gödel discovered is that no matter what man is capable of rationally, there will always be an unknown. Any system of knowledge has limits; every field of discovery is “doomed to incompleteness” (Barrett x). The increase in paradoxical discoveries in many fields of study only serves to enhance this bitter truth.
What then, is the concept that can reconcile the West to the East? Can there be a shared balance between the two very different worlds of thought? I believe that Quality as illuminated by Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is the key to reconciling these two opposing views. However, two things are necessary to state before continuing:
1) The Eastern view of things is not completely right; too much attention paid to illusions will leave you completely inattentive to the needs and circumstances around you. Just as Western philosophy is flawed, so too does Eastern philosophy break down, albeit in different ways than Western philosophy. The balance lies in a composite of the two modes of thinking.
2) While Quality is not a combination of all ‘good’ ideas and concepts, it is the source behind said ideas and concepts. This will be explained in greater detail later, but for now Phaedrus’ evidence for this fact is stated clearly: “Quality was the source and substance of everything” (Pirsig 255).
Quality has yet to be defined, or even described. According to Lao Tzu, and with Quality substituted for Tao, we read, “The quality that can be defined is not the Absolute Quality” (Pirsig 256). Quality itself cannot be defined, because it is outside the realm of subject/object/definition. Just as God cannot be defined by any complete method, so too is Quality. In fact, Pirsig compares Quality to God when he states that the “old English roots for Buddha and Quality, God and good, appear to be identical” (Pirsig 262). Still, a mystical, unnamed, and undefined Quality needs some description. If “Quality is the Buddha," then such an assertion, “provides a rational basis for a unification” of the “three areas of human experience” (Pirsig 261). Pirsig states that these three areas are called “Religion, Art, and Science” (Pirsig 261). Quality is above those three (currently) disunified areas, which means that there is possibility for “introconversion” (Pirsig 262). While it is not the purpose of this paper to explore the nature of Quality in relation to Art, Science, and Religion, it is important to regard these three areas of experience as being the central nature behind Western and Eastern thinking. And when one delves more deeply into this subject, one finds this to be true; in all cultures, in all the places of the world, there are always elements of all three experiences. In that sense alone, Quality has the possibility, even the probability of forming a unity within every way of thinking.
To return to the statement that Quality offers a harmonious reconciliation between Eastern and Western philosophy, we can look at Hegel’s work on the Absolute Mind. Hegel’s Absolute Mind “was independent…both of objectivity and subjectivity” (Pirsig 255). Like Phaedrus’ Quality, Hegel’s Absolute Mind was the “source of everything” (Pirsig 255). Hegel has been “regarded as a bridge between Western and Oriental philosophy” (Pirsig 256). In that sense, Quality itself could be the bridge between Western and Eastern thinking -- even more than the Absolute Mind, because unlike the Absolute Mind that “excluded romantic experience” from its source, Quality is both classical (that is, interested in reason, rationality) and it is romantic (or intuitive, irrational) (Pirsig 256). “Quality [romantic Quality] and its manifestations [classic Quality] are in their nature the same” (Pirsig 256-257). This means that the rationality of a classical nature can be wedded to the romantic intuitiveness of irrationality. If Quality exists, then a marriage of the East and the West is possible.
Quality, though, cannot just be or describe a mystical, all-pervading sense. Quality must be reality, both as Western thinkers know it (or hypothesize it!) to be, and as Eastern thinkers know it (or think it!) to be. At the “moment of pure Quality perception," there “is no subject and there is no object” (Pirsig 297). There is only “a sense of Quality” that only after recognition produces “awareness of subjects and objects”. At the moment of pure Quality, “subjects and objects are identical” (Pirsig 297). This is true in the West, though it is not a recognizable or identifiable (by its nature, any identity at the time creates a definition, which decreases its significance). For instance, I may sit at my computer, happily typing on a paper, much like this one. While I am in the midst of writing, engaged in my “Art”, as it were, there is a Quality sense of just being; there is no recognition on my part that I am typing, or even that I am writing. At that particular moment, I am just being. Because I have not separated the ‘me’ (subject) from the ‘paper’ (object), there is no recognition. That is the true reality. This is also a state of Zen, the “no-mind” of Suzuki. Even though paper writing is just one example, there are countless others which make up the collection of experiences we call “reality”. Reality is not what we perceive. It is what we do not perceive, only sense intuitively. It is Quality.
The reconciliation between the Western method of thinking and the Eastern way of thinking comes through Quality. Quality, because it is above and beyond circumstances and external situations (no subject or object), can occur at any time. “It involves unselfconsciousness, which produces a complete identification” (not a recognition of subject/object, but a feeling of oneness) “with one’s circumstances” (Pirsig 302). Quality is the bridge, the means through which Oriental and Western thinking may be reconnected. It is, as Robert Pirsig writes, an “analytic knife” by which our reality is cut--yet it is not a divisive knife. It offers the ultimate solution to a fragmented mind, the dualistic world in which we live.

Works Cited

Barrett, William (ed.). Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D.T. Suzuki. New York: Doubleday, 1956.
Blatavasky, Madame. The Secret Doctrine. Vol. 1. Theosophy Publishing, 1888.
Capra, Fritjof. The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. Boston: Shambhala Press, 1991.
Kant, Emmanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965.
Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. Trans. Mitchell, Stephen. New York: HarperCollins Press, 1988.
Pirsig, Robert. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. New York: HarperCollins Press, 1974.
Sprague, Rosamund Kent (ed.). The Older Sophists. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1972.

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