Re: MD Intellectual level - New letter from Pirsig

From: Valuemetaphysics@aol.com
Date: Tue Sep 30 2003 - 10:26:33 BST

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    In a message dated 9/29/03 5:03:34 PM GMT Daylight Time,
    paulj.turner@ntlworld.com writes:

    > Another subtler confusion exists between the word, "intellect," that can
    > mean thought about anything and the word, "intellectual," where abstract
    > thought itself is of primary importance. Thus, though it may be assumed
    > that the Egyptians who preceded the Greeks had intellect, it can be
    > doubted that theirs was an intellectual culture.
    >

    Hi Paul,
    This accords with my understanding of the MoQ, as far as i can tell?
    While language and thinking about anything is intellect; and so developed at
    an indeterminate point in the course of human evolution, the Greeks, with
    their abstract interest in geometry and maths developed truth as an immortal
    principle - the intellectual aesthetic of ratio and proportion for example.
    Today, when a builder uses his/her plumb line to check his/her walls' accord
    with gravity, he/she says the wall is 'true.' But that makes a good wall
    because its not going to be in danger of falling down - the wall is true to itself
    and in harmony with its environment.
    The Egyptians built the pyramids, and they had the intellect to do that well
    using geometric methods. But the Greeks went further and raised geometry to an
    art and adopted its methods of discernment into other areas of enquiry - an
    intellectual culture - reason.
    For me, the disturbing problem with that burst of intellectual dynamic was to
    establish reason as the primary intellectual stamp of an intellectual
    society; but if we see reason as art, then it should be tempered with the
    understanding that truth is a species of Quality - something the East understands better
    than the West perhaps?
    Mark.

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