Hi Bo,
sorry again for the length....
> The MOQ wasn't worked out to the final form in ZAMM, yet a comparison
> can be made with care.
OK, let's try....
> The Sophists were P's heroes because they taught
> QUALITY as he interprets them,
Yes but not only. P also likes very much the infamous "man measure of
things"
sentence. And anyway I guess another hero was Socrates, considering the ZAMM
introduction: "and what is good, Phaedrus...."
> my social value connection was a bit
> premature
my least goal reached? :-)
> The philosophers of old struggled to find the Immortal Principles. With
> Parmenides the first silly-sounding entries (water, fire, air etc) reached
the
> stage of the ONE which is separate from appearance and opinion. Pirsig
> says: "... the importance of this separation and its effect upon
subsequent
> history cannot be overstated. It's here that the classic mind for the
first time
> took leave of its romantic origin and said that the Good and the True are
not
> necessarily the same and goes its separate way. Parmenides had a listener
> named Socrates who carried his ideas into fruition."
The history of the pre-socratics is a bit more complex. Some of the "first
entries" are less silly than we can think. Strangely, Pirsig does not
mention Anaximandros (as I can remember), a main figure. He said that
"things" are things as they are defined: each one limits and is limited by
the others. On the background there is the "common matter" of everything:
the "un-defined" ("apeiron"=with no limits). His pupil, Anaximenes, by
suggesting "air" (actually I read that the term he used in archaic Greek
meant more precisely "haziness") was probably trying to say that the
"apeiron" is flowing and obscure like foggy air. The result is an undefined
flow that creates everything, ever heard something like that? :-)
Then Pythagoras focused on the defined realm, and suggested that "things"
are mathematically measurable. That is, mathematics as an universal
principle, independent of the man and knowable, that takes things out of the
"apeiron". In the same period Democritos invented the Atom.
Pirsig is right on the importance of Parmenides (an Italian, by the way),
who actually first separated reality from opinions. Just, that Socrates ever
listened to Parmenides is probably a legend. It is anyway sure that the
ideas of Parmenides and the other early philosophers begun circulating in
Athens when Socrates was young. In the same period even the young Protagoras
was in Athens.
> Now, enter the Sophists who said that all principles, all truth are
relative,
> man is the measure of all things.
Actually, just Parmenides as first triggered the crisis of the objective
dream (as I call it) of Pyhtagoras and the atomists. He showed the
contradictions of the atomists then suggested "reason" as the path from
opinion to truth. The schism is here. Protagoras and the other Sophists
accept the contradictions but can't agree that by means of reason we can go
beyond opinions. According to my old school book I have right now in my
hands, Protagoras said that we can't solve that problem of what's the Being
by means of our thought as "man can't abandon himself" (not very far from
the famous "suspended in language" to my ears). That we experience nature
as a "flow", from which the subject sorts out "facts", so that "being or not
being of things depends on man".
> Socrates did not like this at all, Pirsig says:
> "...he is in the middle of a war between those who think truth is absolute
and
> those who think it is relative. He is fighting that war with everything he
has
> and THE SOPHISTS ARE THE ENEMY." (p.368).
I don't agree with Pirsig completely, here, even if it is a minor point. The
Socrates who looks at the Sophists as "the enemy" is really Plato. Other
disciples of Socrates don't show all this rivalry between Socrates and the
Sophists, even he had for sure many criticisms against them.
For what I know, he actually understood the novelty of the Sophists. He did
not like them as they created their market of ideas, and he felt it was
immoral. But he agreed they rightly had abandoned the seek for the Being
and, like them, he also focused on Man.
His main criticism on Protagoras & co. is that they were teacher of speech
and were talking of Arete, but they could not *say* what *Arete* is really.
He had two mots: one was that "the greatest thing we can know is that
we don't know"; meaning by that that everyone (even the Sophists) should
realize that we don't know what the things we talk about really are.
The second mot was the famous "know yourself". It looks like a
contradiction, but it isn't: it's actually the solution to the impossibility
of knowing. We can't say what's good, but in ourselves we can find the
answer:
And what is good, Phædrus,
And what is not good...
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
Investigating the self is what we should do before acting. An example: when
they offer him to escape before his execution, he does not answer
immediately "no". He says, let's reason. In the end, he decides it would be
immoral to escape and stays. He asks his own conscience. As you see, I like
the Sophists, but my hero is probably Socrates. I am with those who argue
that Socrates is the greatest of the Sophists, the one who completed and
perfected their work and solved the problems they raised.
It is Plato who thinks that truth is not relative. He sees the disaster of
Athens, the mistakes of a democracy who killed Socrates, and blames
relativism for that. Today, we probably would say that it was an incomplete
democracy, and that human rights should prevent injustice and degeneration.
At the times no one could say something like that.
Not Plato, surely. He hates democracy, and longs for aristocracy.
His solution is to find an objective way to justice, something we can only
agree upon.
In matter of knowledge, starting just from Socrates, he thinks that the
first mot was really meaning that we don't know because we are preys of
our opinions. And that the second mot of Socrates means that in
ourselves we can find Truth, as knowing is * remembering * the original
ideas.
>
> You will hopefully agree (Wim did) that the said development is the
> emergence of SOM,
Yes. Plato, invented the subjective/objective split, and declared the
supremacy of the objective over the subjective.
> and in the table on page 243 Pirsig says that the new
> "classic" age - or SOM - is identical to "intellectual reality". Need I
say more?
> The finer points of how the Sophists relate to the MOQ of that stage is to
be
> found on page 368, but - again - if the new classic age is SOM and SOM is
> "intellect" and the Static Intellectual Level is the one following the
Static
> Social Level. Can that be overlooked ...if we buy Pirsig's general
outlook?
This is the Pirsig of ZAMM, isn't it? The "idealist" Pirsig. The said table
says that classic quality is the intellectual reality. But then, in Lila,
Pirsig clearly states that the classic/romantic was not the best split. So,
1) it is arguable if really the "classic quality" of ZAMM is exactly like
the intellectual level of Lila. Anyway, even if they are the same thing....
2) I think that we can well say that the subject/object split of "classic
quality" as depicted in the ZAMM table was not the best split too.
In short, I can agree that "classic thinking" (SOM) is intellectual. I agree
it is western and that it emerges with Parmenides and Plato... I agree that
it is the main intellectual pattern of western history. But I think there
are better "splits".... that don't leave out of intellect art, mysticism,
eastern thought, emotional intelligence and so on.... I call all that
"intellect" as they all share the same basic purpose: to know.
> As said my declaring the Sophists defenders of social value was premature,
> but at least they offended the pundits of the coming S/O-intellectual
reality
> and that indicated such an interpretation. I look forward to YOUR
> explanation why Socrates and Plato hated them ...if you admit that Soc.
and
> Plat. promoted the SOM? If not you have even more to explain ...at least
> regarding Pirsig's presentation.
You ask why Plato hated them. I've said something above about the sense of
injustice he felt .... but let me add an example. It is famous, and even RMP
talks about it in SODAV. When Bohr claims that reality is not objective,
Einstein is not happy, and asks "Do you really believe God resorts to dice
playing?" . Well, Plato, more or less, says the same thing, when he blames
the Sophists.
Ciao,
Marco
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