From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Thu Oct 24 2002 - 13:05:47 BST
Hi all,
To continue my campaign in this thread....
One way of describing my point is to say that the intellect is highly
deficient in discerning Quality. Logic or mathematics (the most purely
intellectual activities) can discern Quality in tightly restricted spheres -
this is discussed by Pirsig in ZMM when he talks about what is left when
Quality is removed from our understanding of the world. And it would seem a
little odd to consider SOM as completely blind to Quality when is has so
successfully static-latched itself into our culture.
Yet most of what we truly value in life is not discerned by our intellect
(ie by logic and reason divorced from our emotions, as 'intellect' was
defined in my dictionary quote) but rather by our judgement. Our judgements
of value are what build up the fourth level; indeed, they are the
constituent elements of the fourth level. Hence the concern of 'human
rights' (which is a social pattern of value directed by the fourth level),
in order to preserve those things that are of Quality. Amnesty International
does not exist to preserve the possibility of intellectual innovation; it
exists to save people, because people are valuable, they have quality.
To my way of thinking, the essence of the fourth level is the existence of
an autonomous individual: autonomous because the individual is (for the
first time) capable of establishing their own laws by which to act (auto
nomos). The individual has freedom of choice - the individual is thereby
open to dynamic innovation. And the individual is able to develop that
freedom through the development and application of the virtues: it is the
wise person that is most free and in touch with Quality, not the
intellectual.
Again, I think this is something that Pirsig himself articulates in ZMM, not
least when he discovers the Sophists properly, and their teaching that 'man
is the measure of all things', and Pirsig writes, "Quality! Virtue! Dharma!
That is what the Sophists were teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not
pristine 'virtue'. But arete. Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of
Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and matter. Before
dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first teachers of the
Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had chosen was that
of rhetoric. He has been doing it right all along."
In fact, the medium that they chose was poetry and tragic drama - the
Sophist approach derived from that. Hence Sophocles....
Perhaps we can only understand Lila fully, when we combine it with a proper
appreciation of the full argument in Zen, and allow ZMM to critique some of
the elements in Lila. Or perhaps in Lila Pirsig has lapsed back into a
Platonic/metaphysical desire for redemptive Truth. More things to
explore....
Sam
www.elizaphanian.v-2-1.net/home.html
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