From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Fri Feb 06 2004 - 16:33:07 GMT
Bo
Bo said:
I accept this - of course I do - but just wanted to point out that this
is Pirsigs interpretation - a most convincing one, but it's difficult
imagining Plato postulating something as higher than GOOD (could you
provide a quote ...from Plato?)
Paul:
I think he does do what Pirsig says, but it is subtle. For example, this
quote below seems to be agreeing with the MOQ that truth is subordinate
to the good:
"Now, that which imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to
the knower is what I would have you term the idea of good, and this you
will deem to be the cause of science, and of truth in so far as the
latter becomes the subject of knowledge" [Republic, 508e]
However, Plato does not start with the reality of an undefined good
(Dynamic Quality) to which all dialectically produced (static
intellectual) patterns are subordinate. He arrives at the reality of the
good by starting with Forms that can only be understood by dialectic:
"Dialectic, and dialectic alone, goes directly to the first principle
and is the only science which does away with hypotheses in order to make
her ground secure; the eye of the soul, which is literally buried in an
outlandish slough, is by her gentle aid lifted upwards" [Republic 533d]
In Plato's philosophy, the existence of forms is assumed first, and
dialectic is the only means of starting the process of grasping the
essence of the forms by supposedly operating outside the realm of
shadows (opinion):
"And do you also agree, I said, in describing the dialectician as one
who attains a conception of the essence of each thing? And he who does
not possess and is therefore unable to impart this conception, in
whatever degree he fails, may in that degree also be said to fail in
intelligence? Will you admit so much?
And you would say the same of the conception of the good? Until the
person is able to abstract and define rationally the idea of good, and
unless he can run the gauntlet of all objections, and is ready to
disprove them, not by appeals to opinion, but to absolute truth, never
faltering at any step of the argument -- unless he can do all this, you
would say that he knows neither the idea of good nor any other good; he
apprehends only a shadow, if anything at all, which is given by opinion
and not by science" [Republic 534b-534d]
Plato is saying that only a pure intellect, by rational means (the
dialectic), may know Quality. The MOQ, as you know, identifies Quality
with immediate experience, known by everyone, before thoughts, before
ideas, before rationality and before dialectic. Plato took Dynamic
Quality and made it a static pattern of intellectual quality, albeit the
highest one. Aristotle demoted it from the highest Form to the object of
a branch of philosophy. It was not of "substance" so became subjective
etc....
Bo said:
Again, I accept Pirsig's interpretation, but contemporary Greek thinkers
did not know Aretê as Good. It got translated into "virtue" and the
translators would certainly have used "good" if that was the case. It
was P. in the RT passage in LILA who made this "discovery". This is most
convincing but it's no use by presenting it as if the Greeks knew the
MOQ, to the contrary they saw the S/O (or the embryonic form it had with
Plato) as the best.
Paul:
As Poot and Mark have responded, other translations suggest the Greeks
saw it as excellence in human endeavour. The MOQ can divide it into
biological excellence (e.g. strength, speed), social excellence (e.g.
virtue, leadership), intellectual excellence (e.g. rhetoric, truth).
Bo said:
Could you please draw Plato's metaphysical "diagram"?
Paul:
"Form" at the top, then the Form of "Good," then other Forms, then their
appearances.
Bo said:
I seem to be the only one (Mati exempted) to see that the MOQ rearranges
EVERYTHING and leaves a new world in its wake.
Paul:
It is what Pirsig has called Dynamic Quality that leaves everything in
its wake, not the MOQ. The MOQ is among the intellectual patterns that
are left in its wake.
Bo said:
It requires a little juggling, but the important first step is to see
that intellect is a static level and as blind to the Quality context as
the rest of the levels.
Paul:
Here, BoMOQ departs from Pirsig's MOQ. Dynamic Quality pervades all
static patterns, including intellectual patterns; it is the continual
source of them and the source of change in them. The Sophists sought to
maintain an understanding of the relationship between static quality and
Dynamic Quality but lost the struggle with Plato who confused Dynamic
Quality with static intellectual quality. In Lila, Pirsig suggests that
the Hindus succeeded where the Sophists ultimately failed:
"...what made the Hindu experience so profound was that this decay of
Dynamic Quality into static quality was not the end of the story.
Following the period of the Brahmanas came the Upanishadic period and
the flowering of Indian philosophy. DYNAMIC QUALITY REEMERGED WITHIN THE
STATIC PATTERNS OF INDIAN THOUGHT." [Lila p.438]
Thus, the east has nothingness, tao, dharma, at the centre of its
culture - including its intellectual patterns. The west has sometimes
gotten near to it with Hegel's Absolute, Heidegger's Being and so on.
Northrop illustrates the differences between eastern and western
intellectual patterns extensively in his "The Meeting of East and West."
I'll leave it at that for now Bo, this post is long enough.
Regards
Paul
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