From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Mon Nov 25 2002 - 11:52:17 GMT
Hi David,
Have another look at my posts in this thread from 24/10, where I touch on
the equivalent passage in ZMM. I think there is tension between ZMM and Lila
on this point. It does boil down to the difference between wisdom and
reason, though (ie which is 'higher', which has more quality), on which
you've already expressed agreement.
Sam
www.elizaphanian.v-2-1.net/home.html
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Buchanan" <DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 2:52 AM
Subject: RE: MD Sophocles not Socrates
> Sam and all:
>
> I wonder what you think of the following Pirsig quote. Does it shed light
on
> your idea of eudaimonic values? I get the impression that this description
> comes close. It comes from chapter 30.
>
> "He'd traced Quality back into its origins in Greek philosophy and thought
> he'd gone as far as he could go. Then he found he was able to go back to a
> time BEFORE the Greek philosophers, to the rhetoricians. Philosophers
> usually present their ideas as sprung from nature or sometimes from God
but
> Phaedrus thought neither of these was completely accurate. The logical
order
> of things which the philosophers study is dervied from the "mythos". The
> mythos is the social culture and the rhetoric which the culture must
invent
> before philosophy becomes possible. Most of the old religious talk is
> nonsense, of course, but nonsense or not, it is the PARENT of our midern
> scientific talk. This "mythos over logos" thesis agreed with the MOQ's
> assertion that intellectual static patterns of quality are built up out of
> social static patterns of quality." (Emphasis is Pirsig's. Now here's the
> good part.)
>
> "Digging back into ancient Greek history, to the time when this mythos to
> logos transition was taking place, Phaedrus noted that the ancient
> rhetoricians of Greece, the Sophists, had taught what they called ARETE,
> which is a synonym for Quality. Victorians had translated ARETE as
"virtue"
> but Victorian "virtue" connoted sexual abstinance, prissiness and a
> holier-than-thou snobbery. This was a long way from what the ancient
Greeek
> meant. The early Greek literature, particularly the poetry of Homer,
showed
> that ARETE had been a central and vital term. With Homer Phaedrus was
> certain he'd gone back as far as anyone could go, but one day he came
across
> some information that startled hime. It said that by following linguistic
> analysis you could go even further back into the mythos tha Homer. ... The
> Proto-Indo-European root of ARETE was the morpheme RT. ... RT refered to
the
> first, created, beautiful repetative order of moral and aesthetic
> corrrectness."
>
> Maybe you'll take a look and see if your eudaimonic values fit in with
these
> ancient ideas about Quality.
>
> Thanks,
> DMB
>
>
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