From: SQUONKSTAIL@aol.com
Date: Mon Sep 08 2003 - 14:23:53 BST
Skutvik:
Compare this to the description of the emergence of SOM from the
very same past (ZMM page 365.Corgi paperback)
"One must first get over the idea that the time span between the last
caveman and the first Greek philosophers was short ....etc." ending
with this passage: "What is essential to understand is that until now
there was no such thing as mind and matter, SUBJECT AND
OBJECT, form and substance."
squonk: But there were intellectual patterns of value. The sophists were
intellectuals, but they incorporated intellectual value in to a larger whole and
included it in the quality human. For many sophists, the arte human was
biologically beautiful, socially accomplished and intellectually erudite.
If this doesn't make the S/O divide identical with Q-intellect something
lacks in my logic, and after doing this harmonization Socrates and his
followers become representatives of the emerging intellectual level,
while their antagonists, the Sophists, stand for the former value level -
society - something that explain another Pirsig "riddle", namely his
anti-intellectual tendencies that the critics saw in LILA. I need not
repeat the "my enemy's enemy, my friend" mechanism.
squonk: Something does indeed lack in your logic. 1. First of all,
Q-intellect is a term you have invented yourself. So, you self referentially confirm
your own definitions without reference to the work of Robert Pirsig. 2. The
former value level is not fully represented by sophists - sophists were
intellectual and on a par with the best philosophers. 3. Pirsig may not have had
anti-intellectual tendencies, he may have been a sophist himself, who wished for
rationality to be diminished thus allowing social quality to harmonise with
intellectual quality.
Back to the ZMM/LILA superimposition. Everything points to the
SOLAQI interpretation, God, if there is anything that supports it it's
this: The TRUTH (objectivity) as opposed to subjective OPINION (that
the Sophist stood for were at that time a fragile thing and Socrates
fought to death for it.
squonk: The passage actually reads as follows:
'Now Plato's hatred of the sophists makes sense. He and Socrates are
defending the immortal principle of the cosmologists against what they consider to be
the decadence of the sophists. Truth. Knowledge. That which is independent of
what anyone thinks about it. The ideal that Socrates died for. The ideal that
Greece alone possesses for the first time in the history of the world. It is
still a very fragile thing.'
The sophists taught excellence, and this included intellectual excellence
also. But for them intellectual excellence is not an immortal principal, for them
intellectual excellence is human art. So, today scientists can draw upon a
repertoire of human art in geometry, which are selected on aesthetic grounds
rather than that of truth, because your scientific enquiry determines what
geometry you choose - a choice based on Quality.
See also how Protagoras' (the arch Sophist) sentence of "Man the
measure of all things" fits with P. of ZMM's attitude of everything being
a human invention. Paul however mixes the pre-MOQ Pirsig with the
post MOQ one.
squonk: Protagoras was very much admired by Socrates and Plato for his
intellect. (Please read The Protagoras by Plato.) Some scholars find it
exceptionally difficult to delineate between Socrates and Protagoras at many points in
this dialogue - they appear to agree!
I have followed your posts with Paul, and i would be pleased if you could
remind us all of just exactly where Paul, 'mixes the pre-MOQ Pirsig with the post
MOQ one.' As far as i can ascertain, you self referentially impose your own
interpretation onto Paul without reference to the work of Robert Pirsig.
Note that intellect's first clash with social value says nothing about
how long it may have served as a good social pattern ...helping
society grow and prosper. Each time I enter this, it's a tendency (of
this group) to either point to "S/O patterns" as impssible ancient as
the biological self/non-self, or point to non-S/O phenomena like art,
aesthetics, intuition, math. etc. all of which are facets of DYNAMIC
VALUE.
squonk: 'non-S/O phenomena like art, aesthetics, intuition, math. etc. all of
which are facets of DYNAMIC VALUE.' This is very much like saying, 'There are
no subjects or objects in the MoQ. I certainly sympathise with that!
squonk:
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