From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Dec 01 2002 - 22:40:05 GMT
Sam and y'all:
Sam said:
Can you expand on what you mean by 'in the same ballpark'? For example, does
Solon count as prehistoric?
If the beginning of history is the beginning of record keeping, why can't it
begin with the invention of cuneiform writing c3500BC in the Sumerian
civilisation? Or at least include the Pharaohs (hieroglyphs were well
established by 3000BC)
DMB says:
Solon is one of those hard cases because he's on the cusp. I'm pretty sure
that Herodotus wrote about him, but Solon died several generations before
the father of history was born. The kind of record keeping you refer to in
Sumeria was, for the most part, just accounting, political propaganda, myth
making and the like. Recording events for posterity evolved out of that sort
of thing, but is really a different creature. But its also important to
remember that we draw these lines long after the fact, and they're certainly
useful distinctions, but we can't be too exact about such things. That's all
I mean by phrases like "in the same ballpark". Its just generally ture, true
enough to be useful as an idea.
Sam said:
I'm more interested in your understanding of Socrates though. (Hopefully we
can have a fun conversation about him).You said (to Steve): "In the days
before Socrates, just before the intellecual level was born..."
How do you read Pirsig's comment in ZMM that what he was saying about
Quality 'is somehow opposed to all this. It seems to agree much more closely
with the Sophists.' (p368 in my copy) (ie opposed to what Socrates and Plato
were trying to do)?
DMB says:
Pin pointing the birth of the intellect at the life of Socrates is another
case of drawing lines after the fact. So is Armistice day after WWI. Its a
generalization, a useful idea invented for our convienience. Socrates was in
fact accuse of being a Sophist, which would make Socrates a preSocratic
thinker, but don't let that kind of thing throw you. I think Pirsig, in
ZAMM, locates Quality with the Sophists because what Socrates started
something that later became a kind of shallow rationalism, especially in the
hands of Aristotle and the Aristoteleans. We see the same kind of thing in
the Enlightenment with relatively shallow and decadent philosophies like
utilitarianism. As I see it, there has been a constant battle between that
kind of cold rationalism and the romantic and or mystical views of the
world. The romantics and mystics, it seems to me, have always tried to
re-integrate the wisdom of the sophists into a kind of deeper and
regenerative rationalism. I think this is what Pirsig accomplishes in his
MOQ, which sort of overrides much of what he said in ZAMM. So we wouldn't
want to go back to sophism, with its' brand of wisdom. That would be
regressive. What we want is to integrate the best of what they had to offer
with reason, logic, science and all that. We want a kind of rationality that
can get to the source of sophistic wisdom. Pirsig's MOQ does just that. Make
sense?
Thanks.
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