From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Tue Nov 29 2005 - 11:52:25 GMT
Rebecca,
Rebecca said: I was just reading some ZMM last night - my favourite bits
when he takes down the Dialecticians, and if what Paul says is acceptable
about DQ being what Pirsig meant by Quality in ZMM then the following has to
make sense as well:
If arete is the same as quality, and quality (in ZMM) is dynamic quality (in
Lila)... and dynamic quality is the pre intellectual cutting edge of
experience, then that's what arete is as well? Does that mean that DQ is
excellence? Could we say that what is most excellent is what is here right
now.. and now.. and now...? Live in the now man?
Or am I confused about Pirsig's conception of the Good??
Paul: Perhaps, but I think any confusion comes from Pirsig not having
expanded the Quality of ZMM to include static quality as well. I think
that, in the light of LILA, aretê (and its Indian equivalent - dharma) is
best understood as Dynamic and static quality together.
In LILA he realises this when he looks into the proto-indo-european
etymology of aretê. He is initially dismayed at the static connotations of
its etymology which differed from his ZMM interpretation of aretê as Dynamic
Quality:
"The meanings [of rt], grouped together, suggested something different from
his interpretation of aretê. They suggested "importance" but it was an
importance that was formal and social and procedural and manufactured,
almost an antonym to the Quality he was talking about. Rt meant "quality"
all right but the quality it meant was static, not Dynamic." [LILA p.435]
But then he identifies the rt morpheme with the Sanskrit "rta," which later
became "dharma," and sees how it "contains" both static and Dynamic Quality
without contradiction, which resolves his dilemma. He thinks the Orient,
with their translation of "rt" into "rta," preserved more carefully and thus
paid more attention to the original meaning of rt - the wider tension
between static (ritual, order) and Dynamic Quality (freedom, change) and
that,
"Unlike the Greeks, the Hindus in their many thousands of years of cultural
evolution had paid enormous attention to the conflict between ritual and
freedom. Their resolution of this conflict in the Buddhist and Vedantist
philosophies is one of the profound achievements of the human mind." [LILA
p.347]
Now, Bo will say that aretê and hence dharma is social quality. Regarding
dharma being social, he is correct in that, like aretê, dharma was taken
from social patterns (from the Vedic use of "rta" in the case of dharma) but
it doesn't end there. Pirsig has this to say in LILA,
"Following the period of the [social] Brahmanas came the [intellectual]
Upanishadic period and the flowering of Indian philosophy. Dynamic Quality
reemerged within the static patterns of Indian thought.
"Rta," Hiriyanna had written, "almost ceased to be used in Sanskrit;
but...under the name of dharma, the same idea occupies a very important
place in the later Indian views of life also." [LILA p.438]
And finally that,
"[D]harma includes both static and Dynamic Quality without contradiction."
[LILA, p.440]
In a similar vein, the meaning of the word aretê comes from a prehistoric
time before intellect and so is heavily linked to social quality, hence the
translation into "virtue." But words invented socially are not excluded
from being used intellectually and so it is not necessary to say that aretê
is restricted to being a "social era" term for Quality that still meant
social quality when it was later used by the Sophists to refer to all-round
excellence, including intellectual excellence. As well as social
leadership, physical prowess is the subject of an abundance of superlatives
in Iliad and Odyssey and the Sophists, after all, were masters of the logos.
So I don't think aretê is just social quality, if anything I think it is
more that the Greek conversion of "rt" into "aretê" often seems to leave it
referring more to static quality than to Dynamic Quality as well.
Thanks for considering my suggestion that ZMM's Quality = LILA's Dynamic
Quality.
Regards
Paul
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