From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Mon Feb 09 2004 - 10:25:22 GMT
Bo
Bo said:
But for you too Paul, is/was Rhetoric an intellectual endeavor?
Paul:
Yes.
Bo said:
ZMM describes the coming of SOM and whether you accept the SOLAQI or not
SOM is intellectual value. The Sophists were the last defenders of the
old Social reality not any Intellectual forerunners and Rhetorics was
their "tool".
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."
Here Pirsig says that Dialectics is the parent of logic (SOM) and that
it comes from the mythological past by way of Rhetorics
Paul:
I think he is saying that rhetoric (intellectual patterns) is the child
of myth and poetry (social patterns), not that it is part of mythology.
My understanding of rhetoric, when it is not preceded by "empty," is
that of the method of constructing good arguments. Good arguments are
constructed with clarity, precision and coherence and use a variety of
techniques and proofs. If you study these techniques I think you would
see that they are a far cry from the simple recounting of events you
find in Homer. I think Pirsig sees rhetoric as every bit as much an
intellectual activity as dialectic.
"Phædrus guessed that Aristotle's diminution of dialectic, from Plato's
sole method of arriving at truth to a "counterpart of rhetoric," might
be as infuriating to modern Platonists as it would have been to Plato.
Since the Professor of Philosophy didn't know what Phædrus' "position"
was, this was what was making him edgy. He might be afraid that Phædrus
the Platonist was going to jump him. If so, he certainly had nothing to
worry about. Phædrus wasn't insulted that dialectic had been brought
down to the level of rhetoric. He was outraged that rhetoric had been
brought down to the level of dialectic." [ZMM p.366]
Bo said:
If the Sophists had been the ones that confronted social value THAT
conflict would have been central in Pirsigs presentation. But - no - it
was Plato vs Sophism.
Paul:
Yes, because Phaedrus believed that..."Plato's hatred of the
rhetoricians was part of a much larger struggle in which the reality of
the Good, represented by the Sophists, and the reality of the True,
represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a huge struggle for
the future mind of man." [ZMM p.371] The future mind of man being the
future of intellectual patterns.
Bo said:
The Sophists knew as little of the quality context as Plato did.
Paul:
I would rephrase that to say that they knew nothing of Robert Pirsig's
MOQ, but they knew a lot about aretê.
Bo said:
A metaphysics like the MOQ reaches back and rearranges everything in its
picture. It is from that point of view we see this context. It delivers
an unpreceded powerful explanation, but to say that the past saw things
this way is nonsense. A nonsensical is that of Plato "confusing" things.
Paul:
I think it is redescription, not nonsense. But if it were nonsense to
describe positions held in the past in MOQ terms then you are equally
nonsensical to say this:
"[Plato] represented the intellectual level and that one is supposed to
be better that the social value of the Sophists"
What intellectual level was Plato representing? What social value were
the Sophists upholding? Nonsense. It would also be nonsense to say
anything like this:
"The identification of rta and aretê was enormously valuable, Phaedrus
thought, because it provided a huge historical panorama in which the
fundamental conflict between static and Dynamic Quality had been worked
out....The resolution of this conflict in the Buddhist and Vedantist
philosophies is one of the profound achievements of the human mind."
[Lila p.347]
Pirsig isn't saying that a "Quality era" to follow your "intellectual
era" dawned in the seventies, he is suggesting that thousands of years
ago, what he calls Quality, the Sophists called arête, the Hindus called
rta, the Taoists called Tao, the Buddha called nothingness....
Sometimes I think we are close to agreement, and then I see just how far
apart we are.
Regards
Paul
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Feb 09 2004 - 10:25:12 GMT