From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Thu Oct 24 2002 - 22:52:03 BST
Hi Peter,
Thanks for responding. You're a stimulating interlocutor, even if I
sometimes think we're talking past each other. Probably just my own
obsessions clouding my appreciation of your position. Anyhow:
>
> Peter: I am not sure who IS advocating that intellect is sufficient for
> discerning Quality? Quality produces intellect and therefore intellect may
> only evolve in accordance with DQ.
>
I thought that was the gist of calling it the intellectual level. Quality
produces everything, so I agree with the second part - but what is the
vehicle of intellectual evolution? Individual choices.
>
> Peter: The notion of Human rights IS an intellectual pattern of value.
Agreed - all notions are intellectual povs.
> From a
> social perspective, Human rights may get in the way of one celebrity
> dominating societies, and may therefore be seen to be intellectual values
> privileging themselves over and above a purely social pattern.
>
I think you need to unpack this a bit more, as it stands it's a non sequitur
(that is you haven't argued for it being intellectual).
>
> Peter: I see you have a tight grip on this idea and wish to see it
through?
Oh yes. My latest fad :-) which I'm sure will pass at some point, when the
muse decides to leave me.
> Any notion of individuality is a static social pattern.
This is a potentially strong argument against my thesis (that individuals
are exclusively social level products). I don't think it holds though.
Clearly there are large components of what make up a 'person' that have
their origin below the fourth level, but for the argument to hold, it would
have to be shown that there are no parts of individuals that operate beyond
the social level. I think there are various grounds for disputing that,
which I have gone into elsewhere. But I think this is a fruitful area for
debate and investigation - precisely where the borders lie.
> I see this as a
> dynamic social activity and not an intellectual activity; intellectual
> patterns don't require celebrity status to survive - they can lay dormant
for
> hundreds of years before continuing to evolve. Individuals die
biologically
> and in moments of pre-intellectual awareness like ecstatic states.
>
Intellectual patterns don't require celebrity status to survive - but they
do require individuals to understand and agree with them, to propagate them
and codify them, to write them down or otherwise transmit them to the
future, to embody them in social organisations. Etc Etc.
>
> Peter: Before individuality? No! Individual celebrities were at work at
this
> time and so was intellect - Reason and its product concepts are not all
their
> is to intellect. Excellence can be just as much a matter of intellect as
it
> can be of social quality, but Reason is excellent to the degree that it
can
> be used for those things which require rationality to operate.
I agree with this to some extent. Reason does operate at the social level,
but individuality needs something more. So I think this actually supports my
view.
> Sophocles was
> an individual in that he had excellence and not in that which delineated
him
> as an individual rational entity.
>
Again, I think you'd need to expand on this before I could agree with you.
> Peter: Poetry lives in a storm of inspirational madness. Poetry was an
oral
> tradition whereas written text is the product of a rational?
I see a gradual development from pre-Homer through to Aristotle. I think
individuality can actually be seen in the accounts of Achilles and Hector,
but it took the social scene of fifth century Athens for it to flourish.
Sam
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