From: Valuemetaphysics@aol.com
Date: Sat Feb 07 2004 - 16:29:24 GMT
Bo:
The Sophist's role in the MOQ is an interesting issue, but I have
trouble seeing where you place them in this post, however, from
earlier experience I know that you see them as intellectual
forerunners, but that is inconsistent with Pirsig's texts.
Mark 7-02-04: Robert Pirsig is a Sophist. He tells us this when he meets the
Chairman. Many sophists were pragmatists (Protagoras for example); they know
truth is contingent upon value. The American pragmatists of the 20th century
are continuing what Protagoras was exploring, and Pirsig is a culmination of
that thread.
Bo:
That aretê is excellence - or Quality - there is no question about,
but the MOQ says that there are four static levels of Aretê - and
the problem is what INTELLECTUAL ARETÊ is. "Intellectual
pursuit" in your words sounds like mere mathematical prowess, in
that case pre-intellectual LEVEL cultures had many excellent
intellectuals, and this make no sense.
Mark 7-02-04: No. This is a fundamental misunderstanding on your part. Aretê
IS Quality. The sophists taught Quality. This is why Robert Pirsig regarded
himself as a sophist - he taught Quality.
Bo:
What has mathematics got do with it?
Mark 7-02-04: Maths is a Human invention. Therefore, maths, like all Human
endeavour is primarily concerned with Quality.
Bo:
Hold it Mr Maxwell. The strange thing is that in ZMM social
quality DOES seem to be Aretê, i.e: Quality itself.
Mark 7-02-04: God bless you, No. Aretê is Quality full stop. In J.O. Urmson's
famous commentary on Aristotle's Ethics, he tells us that ALL Greek
translations of Aretê should be Excellence. Everything, but everything is measured by
excellence what ever that may be. Everything is Quality.
PIRSIG (ZMM p.391)
> > "Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric.
> > Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece.
> > That is so historically, and that is so by any application of common
> > sense. The poetry and the myths are the response of a prehistoric people
> > to the universe around them made on the basis of Quality. It is Quality,
> > not dialectic, which is the generator of everything we know."
Mark 7-02-04: That is what J.O. Urmson and Robert Pirsig are saying. Kato
also. Quality is everything. When a philosopher says he is better than a sophist,
what the philosopher is saying is that a pragmatic view of Quality - a view
shared by the 20th century American pragmatists and Protagoras - is bad. The
philosopher wants us to reject a pragmatic view of Quality and make Quality,
Aretê, an idea. You cannot make Quality an idea, because Quality is a word which
merely points to the indefinable source of everything. The word Aretê serves
the same function.
Bo:
Dialectics represents SOM and above Pirsig says that it comes
from Rhetorics which is from the ancient Mythos, but in LILA and
the MOQ the mythological past IS the social level
("The Mythos is the social structure ..." (LILA p 386)
Mark 7-02-04: God bless you, No. The Socratic elenchus, as revealed in the
early Platonic dialogues, and which is the forerunner of Plato's dialectic, is a
method by which it may be shown that now one can define Quality. Well, that
is hardly damn surprising is it?
"Digging back into ancient Greek history, to the time when this
mythos-to-logos transition was taking place, Phaedrus noted that the ancient rhetoricians
of Greece, the Sophists, had taught what they called aretê, which was a synonym
for Quality."
Aretê is a synonym for Quality. The Sophists never tried to define it, and
Socrates could not define it. Neither could Plato or Aristotle, although they
tried, and that lead to Substance is real, Quality is not. Had Protagoras been
able to present his views for himself, we would have had American C20
pragmatist - like ideas challenging Substance, and suggesting that Quality is real but
indefinable, while Substance was just one way among many of categorising past
experience. Because Aristotle's ideas had full social acceptance our mythos
has been a history filled with a very rigid structure. But, the intellectual
views of Protagoras have never gone away...
Mark
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