From: Robin Brouwer (rsbrouwer@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Apr 16 2005 - 15:44:06 BST
Hi Matt, everyone.
I can truly say that I don't know a whole lot about Socrates or Sophism,
I've never had any lectures on it but through ZMM it did catch my interest.
>Robin said:
>However the distinction Pirsig makes between philosophers and
>philosophologers and might be the same distinction many see between the
>Sophists and Socrates.
>
>The Sophist believed that truth could only be found wthin oneself and that
>each person had his or her own truth. There was thus no use for listening
>to others to find any truth, it was only usefull because it was interesting
>and fun, but truth was still to be found wthin oneself and not within
>someone else.
>
>Socrates believed in a universal truth only known by gods in total, but
>those truths sometimes showed their faces in discussion and within the
>similarities of ideas and opinions of the many speakers.
>
>Matt:
>This, and what followed, I think, is wrong in a certain respect. I think
>you have it exactly backwards. First, remember that it is Socrates that
>Pirsig is quoting in the inscription at the beginning of ZMM. It's
>Socrates, as brought to us by Plato, that thought that we each individually
>had the truth in our breasts because our immortal souls had seen it before
>they descended to earth and that conversation was simply a method of
>anamnesis, or "remembering." I think your characterization of the Sophists
>moreorless comes from a distorted reading (a reading passed on for years up
>to this very day in philosophy classes) of Protagoras' famous dictum "Man
>is the measure of all things." The way Protagoras meant it and the way
>Pirsig reads it is _not_ that each person is hopelessly and
>relativistically caught in their individual perspectives, but that truth is
>generated by the confluence of people. People generate truth by
>discussion.
Robin:
Fair enough, you certainly know more about it then me, but I still think the
distinction between sophists and socrates can give us a guide to make the
distinction between Philosophers and philosophologers as Pirsig intented it.
The clearest distinction is in believing in a Static/ divine truth (as
socrates did) or only believing in a dynamic truth that can be altered at
any time. (as the sophists did.)
>What's interesting about the dialectic in Socrates is that Socrates clearly
>thought conversation and the exchange of views a good thing, but the way it
>is presented in, for instance, the Republic seems to make it something more
>like algebra, which is something you can do by yourself. I think Plato
>distorted Socrates' method of dialectical conversation and pushed it
>towards something more resembling a mathematical equation because, after
>all, we already did know the answers. We just needed to remember them.
>
>For the Sophists, conversation is much more important because, as you say
>correctly, they did not believe in a hidden universal truth behind our
>debased, common truths. The Sophists were the first reaction against
>Parmenidean philosophy, where common sense and experience were rejected in
>favor of something (possibly radically different) going on behind the
>scenes. The Sophists parodied Parmendies for making philosophy something
>detached and remote from the concerns of actual life. Socrates, who was
>considered a Sophist at the time, also had a strong ethical concern, he
>just differed from them on the matter of education (i.e. the teaching of
>virtue). Socrates and Plato, I think, should be seen as the
>counter-reaction to the Sophists whereby they took along the Sophists
>concern for virture, but kept Parmenides concern for what was really going
>on in the unseen background. Much is the story that Pirsig tells at the
>end of ZMM (though it is slightly different in important respects), and
>Pirsig aligns himself with the Sophists against Socrates and Plato, with
>common sense and experience and against something going on behind the
>scenes.
>
>I think conversation is very important for Pirsig, as it was for the
>Sophists and Socrates (though perhaps not for Plato), and that part of
>enlarging our scope of conversation would be experiencing more and more
>things, stuff, views, etc. A great way of facilitating that, I would
>think, would be through reading.
>
>Matt
I agree completely, and conversation and reading can help people finding
their own truth.
I would however make the distinction between finding your own dynamic truth
or searching for a universal truth.
In my opinion searching for a static universal truth is fine, however
stating you have found it would not be possible in my opinion, it is however
possible in my opinion to find a very valuable method or idea.
This is the dilemma Socrates as a sophist must have faced when he started to
find out his universal truths through discussion, after having found those
universal truths he used strong retoric to make others believe that the
truths were not just from himself but could be aplied to any individual.
At that point he stopped beeing a sophist and became an authority within his
field of truths.
If we would now look at the current philosophers we can see that some
present their ideas as a universal truth, mostly based on history and by
quoting persons that bear authority in a certain field.
I think Pirsig would call these people Philosophologers. People that believe
in static truth.
Other philosophers present their ideas as solutions or methods of high value
and want to convince other people of the value of their insights, they
believe that there idea has a high value, but they are open to the ideas of
others because through conversation a new idea of possibly even higher value
might be formed. I believe that Pirsig would call these people Philosophers,
people that believe in dynamic truth.
In that respect I would not call you a philosophologer, since I do not feel
you present your ideas in an authoritive way and as a universal truth.
Regards
Robin
_________________________________________________________________
Speel online games via MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Apr 16 2005 - 15:47:50 BST