Hettinger (hettingr@iglou.com)
Fri, 28 Aug 1998 01:16:28 +0100
Bodvar Skutvik wrote:
> About the Intellect's seemingly short lifespan: As we have laboured
> over this enigma I think we have it's ORIGIN in a very remote past (I
> am reluctant to fix a point in time). It developed further with
> language, writing - still in "the service of" society - but emerged
> with a life of its own around Homer's time and bloomed with the
> early Greek thinkers. Finally it reached "metaphysical" proportions
> with Socrates, Platon and Aristoteles (as SOM), but as LILA suggests,
> it did not become a political motivating force until the last
> century.
All of these things you mention are instances of a particular set of intellectual
patterns becoming socialized in such a way that the social entities under them are
powerful (valued?) enough to subsume previous social entities. And then the cycle
goes again, as people rebel against the old knowledge (as it is contained in habit
and tradition) and proclaim that a "new knowledge" based on non-social experience
and observation is better.
This is what the Greeks were doing in the time of herodotus and Socrates, this is
what the Confucians were doing, until, of course their lore became the static set to
be rebelled against. This is what happened during the Renaissance, during post
WWII, and, I think, in the lila squad.
Pirsig talks about intellect separating itself from its parent level, the Church,
and this happened, but I think this was not the only time it happened. I think we
have to also see that Scientific Method and education became a new "faith", a faith
in certain procedures.
Sometimes I think it's hard to distinguish between the social results of action
within different levels and the difference between the actual patterns of
value.
Maggie
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